Star Wars Republic Commando 2: Rebellion
by The Typer
Summary: Join Delta Squad in the dramatic and action packed sequel: Star Wars Republic Commando 2: Rebellion. Campaign 2.
1. Chapter 1

Star Wars

Republic Commando

II

Rebellion

From the Author

Before I start this story, I would like to mention some things.

This is my version, or thoughts, or ideas of what happens after the ending to the game Republic Commando. I'm sure many of you have heard different stories and you may be tired of them, but hopefully you will at _least _attempt reading mine. The timeline may appear different than your usual Republic Commando story, and that is because I use the timeline found in Star Wars Republic Commando: Hard Contact (a book) and I mix that with the timeline in the game. Basically I figured that at the end of the game they were on day 788, near two years into the war. According to the book timeline, Revenge of the Sith does not take place for another year so that is why the storyline, and timeline will seem different than expected. Credit for the story goes to Erik Courter, my good friend who helped me in some areas, Lucasarts for developing the game, Tim Longo for directing the game, and George Lucas for creating the Star Wars universe so I can write this hopefully great book.

This mainly applies to people who are not familiar with Republic Commandos.

Republic Commandos are the greatest, deadliest, most skilled, type of clones in the galaxy. And Delta Squad is the greatest squad of Republic Commandos. These clones, like many others, are created without father or mother. And they are paired together at young ages. They begin training at extremely young ages, somewhere at the age of 1-2 years old. For clones though, every year is doubled because of the accelerated growth the Kaminos did. Kaminos created Clones by the way. These young kids who start training so early, train to fight, and train to kill. The training is intensely hard, for clones die instead of not passing. To the Kaminos it does not matter if some die, because there are thousands being created every day.

Being put together into a group like that, as little kids, fighting all the time, facing death, creates a bond in between the squad of clones. And this bond will create brotherhood, making the clones care for each other. The brotherhood will help the squad of clones care for each other. Eventually, the squad will do anything to be with each other, and care for each other more than anything else. This is especially true if no one in the squad died.

This story is not about lightsabers waving around, Jedi vs. Sith, or the usual Star Wars stuff that most people have grown tired of. This story is about a squad, and what will happen, when fully grown and integrated into such brotherhood, and a brother is lost…

Intro- Holo log of Delta RC-01/138.

Today is day 788. We are on Kashyyyk. We just lost Sev. Scorch is really ticked; I think we all are. But we had to leave him behind, I regretted doing it from the beginning. Unfortunately the orders came from General Master Yoda himself. Right now we're heading to Kachiro, where our next mission will be revealed. The only thing I know about our next mission is that it will take place on a war zone.

Chapter I- Day 788- 0845 hours- Clone Wars- Kachiro- Kashyyyk

The room inside the Republic Gunship was dark, and the smell of hot, melted iron, and metal filled the room. Even though my Katarn armor filtered out smells on it's own, the scratched armor that had been through so many battles, was starting to die off.

My name is Republic Commando (RC) 01/138, three-eight for short. My nickname is "Boss". I lead Delta Squad of the Grand Army of the Republic, also known as the Clone Army. Delta Squad was made up of the greatest and deadliest clones in the entire galaxy that normally turned out to be a fact instead of an opinion. Delta Squad contained three other Republic Commandos. Fixer, was one of them, the second in command of Delta Squad. He was also called by his number 40. When it came to Forty he was a very, very by-the-book commando. Scorch was another of the four. He was a funny yes I said funny, clone. Republic Commandos are so close to humans that they normally come up with their own personalities. Sev was the other commando, a hunter, and a very deadly one I might add. He and Scorch were what we called "pod brothers", two commandos in the same squad who are always fighting alongside each other, clones who do not go anywhere without the other. Such bonds are normally only found in commando squads because of the different personalities, and more human characteristics.

We were sent to Kashyyyk because the Separatist forces were planning an invasion, we had found evidence on a previous mission that proved this. Several missions took place on Kashyyyk. First, we had the Trandoshan slave camp mission, in which we were sent to a camp with captured wookies in it. Kashyyyk is the home planet for wookies, and they have been used for slavery for thousands of years. Normally, they are captured, or sold, or even worse they have been skinned for pelts. Hunted down like animals, they were. A war was going on though, and not only were we sent into Kashyyyk to save the wookie population, but also to save the planets the clone army had control over. The first step would be to attack this camp, and rescue at _least _the wookie resistance leader: Tarrful. We finished the mission easily, and were sent to destroy a hidden base on Kashyyyk, where Trandoshans had hidden munitions and droids. We once again successfully accomplished the mission, with a big bang too. Next we were sent to destroy a bridge near the capital of Kashyyyk: Kachiro. The bridge was simply named after the city, and we blew the bridge after a tough fight to prevent the Separatist forces from advancing further. In a final battle, the four of us fought our way to four large wookie rocket turrets and destroyed a large Separatist Cruiser. The turrets were set up a distance away from each other, and shortly after the destruction of the cruiser, we lost contact with Sev.

The fight for Kashyyyk was not yet over though. And the remaining three of us had to head back into battle; and _I _had to lead them.

We finally got off the Republic Gunship, and I noticed immediately that we were in the same place as where we started the bridge mission. It was just a small walkway connecting the path to the market concourse and another building in the city. The market concourse was a bridge like building where wookies would normally sell goods and stuff.

"Three-eight, hold your position until the wookies take cover and gunship wing delta four-two rendezvous with your squad." That was the advisor he's our "eye in the sky", he tells us objectives, gives us our briefing, and gives us intelligence, which is facts about the mission that can be helpful.

"How's Scorch doing?" I asked 40. Scorch was 62's nickname, each of us have one but people like advisors or anybody out of the squad wasn't to know the nickname, they're secrets. Scorch got his nickname because of a demolition accident in training that left he and his instructor without eyebrows for a while.

"Not to good Boss," replied Fixer. Fixer got his name just because he was an excellent technician, he could slice any terminal or do anything that involves hardware. He was second in command of our squad. My nickname was pretty obvious on how I got it, and if you don't know, I'm Delta lead.

"I'll try to calm him down, I want you to set up a sniping position looking on the concourse area," I replied. Fixer nodded and found a position. I found Scorch sitting on a cargo box cleaning his DC-17. For those of you that don't know what a DC-17 is, it's a standard weapon for a clone commando such as Scorch, Fixer, and any other commandos. It has three setups where one is a repeating blaster, best used on droids, and it held sixty rounds per clip. Another is a sniper rifle with five rounds. And the last setup was an Anti-Armor round, which was terribly deadly.

I climbed up on a cargo box that was above and behind Scorch. "You okay?" I asked.

"Do you think I'm okay?" he replied.

"No, I just can't think of anything else to say to begin a conversation."

"Why did we leave him behind? He wasn't that far."

"None of us wanted to leave him but we had to obey the orders, if we didn't we would probably be decommissioned and then you probably wouldn't have seen Sev again."

"Fixer doesn't care about Sev."

"Yeah he does, you heard him."

"Well he's never acted like he did so why now."

"Probably because he never noticed that he actually liked him as a brother."

"I guess so."

His anger was dying down. Sev was the squad member we lost. We were not sure if he was dead. He has a very, very, deep voice, is excellent in sniping, and is very hard to kill. His closet brother (and I say brother because we practically lived together, barely doing any missions with other squads,) is Scorch he'll do everything with him. Many would think I would take Fixer as my closet brother since we're both very by the book, but I wasn't truly one hundred percent sure which to take as my closet brother. We never got much spare time to stay on the big strike cruisers long enough to hang out, we bond as brothers a lot in combat but we would be on the strike cruisers for a few days, then get sent on some crazy mission of despair and come out fine, that was how we lived.

"I got a reading of a dwarf spider droid, no wait two, no wait," Fixer was saying. I interrupted him though, "How many Fixer!"

"I don't know they keep on going into the concourse." If they made it past the concourse they could destroy the city and all the fighting, losing Sev would be for nothing. "Advisor, how much longer till those gunships get here!"

"About fifteen minutes why?" he asked.

"We have a continuing number of spider droids going into the concourse!" I replied.

"Well they won't get there in time to help you out, you'll have to destroy the concourse."

"Are you nuts, that'll leave behind all the wookies out there AND Sev." Protested Scorch.

The Advisor replied in a sorry tone, "We don't have a choice. Find a wookie rocket launcher and hit one of the fuel lines. That will destroy it."

"Fixer, Scorch don't blow it just yet I'm not killing any wookies over this," I said, and ran to into a small building complex that connects the concourse with the rest of the city and found Tarrful. "Advisor translate his words for me." I commanded.

I said for him to translate his words for me because most creatures know galactic basic (English) they just don't speak it that much. "Tarrful is there any wookies in the concourse?" He replied with his growls and then I heard the advisors' voice say, "One." I quickly ran off to the concourse and when the door opened I saw the wookie running past me I then heard large explosions; the spider droids were already halfway through!

"Fixer, Scorch blow it now hurry!" I made it out of there just in time as the concourse was destroyed right behind me. I walked back to my squad to see them staring at the explosion. At first I thought they were as dumb as battle droids but when I turned my head to see what they were looking at, I wouldn't stop staring either.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter II- Day 788-0910 hours-Kachiro-Kashyyk

His gray cloak, covering most of his somewhat white armor with yellowish eyes, unblinking eyes, always staring, he was the Jedi slayer, one without force powers who lead the separatists as general, with deadly bodyguards, with a name that would shiver me forever, General Grievous.

He was standing in what looked like one of the normal smuggling freighters but there was a large window that showed him, with two of his bodyguards next to him, one on each side. "Advisor, take a look at this silhouette data I'm about to send you." I said. A few moments later we heard him reply, "It's Grievous!"

Scorch sarcastically replied, "No really! I thought it was a dinosaur."

I found it strange his humor came back out of nowhere.

"He appeared behind the concourse when we blew it. And he is in a smuggling vessel." I told the Advisor.

"Delta 38 try to get a tracking device on that ship, it may help us know what they're smuggling and where it's coming from," said the Advisor. But we couldn't throw anything that far. "I can't advisor but I'll send as much silhouette data as possible," I suggested. The Advisor agreed.

I took some photos on any ensigmas I could find, species, I.D. numbers, the ship itself, and I got a few of Grievous before he stopped staring at us and left. A bit after he left we heard Scorch ask, "I wonder what he was staring at us for."

"Or what he was doing here, again," Fixer asked.

"Or why he was in a smuggling ship," I asked.

"All the questions make sense," Scorch paused in his speech, "too bad we don't have answers. Hey, did anyone see Sev in there?"

"No," Fixer replied, "It's too bad, we're going to need him **soon enough**." Those last two words caught Scorch's ears and pulled as hard as they could until he let it out all in less than one second. "SOON ENOUGH," he said, "**SOON ENOUGH!"**

"Calm down, I didn't…"

"**HE'S OUR BROTHER, OUR FRIEND, WE ALWAYS NEED HIM, BECAUSE WE AREN'T WHOLE WITHOUT HIM, WITHOUT HIM THERE WERE MANY TIMES WE WOULD NEVER HAVE LIVED HE'S NOT A TOOL, WE ALWAYS NEED HIM, WE…**" I stopped him in his speech, "The fact is Scorch is that he isn't here. I wish he was but if we argue we'll lose the whole squad! Now pipe it down!" Arguing was a dangerous thing in a squad, it made mistrust fall onto the members and soon enough they wouldn't obey orders, or maybe even worse, such as Fox squad.

Fox squad had a very by the book leader but one member of the squad was a wild dog, he didn't like to follow orders and once, the leader made had the squad split up into two groups. And when the wild dog was in the right spot to attack he turned to his squad mate and pointed out a weak area that the enemy didn't notice yet and began to persuade the squad mate into going with him to help. But the other three in the squad were all by the book type and so they had a fight and the struggle lasted awhile until the wild dog killed his new opponent. The other two of Fox squad were victorious in their battle and they found, and sustained the wild dog. The three-squad members were separated and put into different squads by the Jedi council's decision. Fox squad used to be an okay squad but one argument led to a complete squad separation, if my men at that moment didn't listen or maybe some other times we might have never seen each other again while we were alive, and when you've known each other for most of your life and you're a commando, you'd rather be dead.

"Advisor, did you hear that?" I asked trying to keep my voice calm.

"Hear what?" he replied confused.

"Good."

If the Advisor heard arguments he would intervene and squads need a leader to count on. An Advisor wouldn't understand the brotherhood of being a commando, only commandos know. Our comlinks built into our helmets let out some static we then heard a familiar voice. "Delta three-eight do you read me, this is gunship wing delta four-two."

"Loud and clear four-two how far are you?" I asked.

"We're a few clicks away. How's Kachiro holding?"

"No sights of enemies anywhere. Hold your fire when you get here." I said.

"Roger that, see you in a minute." (When he said clicks, he was referring to measurements; they're like kilometers long but longer.)

"Okay four-two here's what we got," I said as four-two was pulling out a map, "this was the Kachiro Bridge but we had to destroy it to cut off one of the ways into the city. This was a trandoshan slaver camp that was holding Tarrful we took over that, and this was a separatist supply base." Four-two pulled out another map with places I never saw. "This is where we believe the droid army has fallen back too. It is surrounded by many small bases and a hilly area," he said. "We're planning to take the gunship I came in, and the one behind you to take out the base, is there something I'm missing from this plan?"

"Yes," I said immediately spotting a flaw.

"What is it?" he asked.

I answered, "Well if this is where they fell back too I'm sure they have artillery set up around the base, so we take this base here," I pointed to a base south-east of the main base it had large hills in between the main base and the base itself. "Once we take this base we'll plan from there."

"That sounds good," said four-two.

"Alright Delta squad let's hop on."

While we were on the Gunship I sat on the back right seat, Fixer was next to me on the left, a clone trooper was across from him and Scorch was across from me. I looked across from me and saw Scorch looking out one of the small cracks on the side doors aimlessly. He suddenly moved his head back like he was surprised and then moved his head closer into the crack. He then shouted out while looking at me and said, "Boss, it's Grievous!" Four-two opened the door on our side and we saw him on top of the other gunship. Grievous took his two lightsabers of blue and green and stabbed it into both side doors. He swung them from the front to the back. He then stabbed them into the pilot and the co-pilot on the head down. When he brought his sabers up the clones were stuck on the sabers, he swung them off into the jungle. He turned his head quickly and squinted his scary yellow eyes at me again. Four-two closed the door and a few seconds later the ship started shaking violently, it soon steadied but then the cone trooper across from Fixer suddenly screamed. When I turned my head to see what happened I saw a glowing blue sleek lightsaber blade right through his head. I pushed Fixer down and yelled, "get down," right before the sleek saber slashed backwards. We were all on the floor now when we saw the deadly eyes look through the slash hole in the left door, the eyes moved away after a tiny bit. Then Grievous put his claw into one of the cracks in the door, and ripped it open. Grievous jumped in immediately with lightsabers drawn. Scorch charged right at him ready to stab him with the wrist vibroblades when Grievous quickly put away his right lightsaber and grabbed him by the neck holding him in the air. Grievous brought him right up to his face and said, "You're even more pathetic than the wasteful, normal clones." He lifted his left hand with the saber and held it ready to stab his face when I heard a familiar sound, blaster fire. Fixer shot his DC-17 one shot and hit Grievous right in the eye. "Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhgggg!" He immediately dropped Scorch and covered his eye with his metal hand. I moved up to Scorch and asked if he was fine.

"I'm fine," he said, "I don't think he is though."

Forty shot Grievous a few more times and he finally fell out of the gunship. Fixer and I walked up to the side grabbed the roof handle and watched Grievous fall. When he hit the ground he started running. I turned back inside the gunship and yelled out, "Forty, Scorch, grab whatever ammo you need and put your safeties on, we're jumping!" I turned towards the pilot's direction and yelled "four-two we're going after Grievous, meet up with General Yoda and tell him to meet us at the base, we'll try to meet you there." I then turned back to my squad mates now holding a few ammo crates ready to jump. "Hold your fire until we hit the ground once we hit the ground, safeties off," I said. We got near the edge of the gunship and jumped. The landing hurt pretty bad, my shields were down already. I quickly got up, grabbed my DC, flipped the safety off, and looked around. I saw no one but in a few seconds I heard blaster fire. I saw Scorch blasting away at Grievous who was quickly dodging the rapid and crazy blaster fire bouncing off the trees using his now four arms and two legs. I switched my DC to sniper mode and zoomed once, but couldn't see him, so I zoomed again but I noticed that Grievous had gotten away.

When I zoomed out I saw that Scorch was still shooting like nuts, now hoping that he would hit Grievous. I walked up to Scorch and was on the left of him, I tried to ease the blaster down with my left hand, but he didn't seem to like that. Scorch grabbed my left wrist and flipped me over when I was on the ground I was staring at Scorch holding me down at the neck with the blaster at helmet. If I moved he would either shoot me or let the vibroblade from his glove slit through the thin felt slicing my neck, killing me. It was dead silent for a while until I heard a click noise, I immediately knew where the noise came from and heard the voice of Forty. I saw Fixer behind Scorch holding his DC at the back of his head. "PUT THE BLASTER DOWN," he said slowly. "SCORCH, PUT IT DOWN NOW." The blaster that was aimed at me started to shake and eventually the blaster fell next to my head. Scorch rolled over and fell next to me on the left. He leaned forward, popped his helmet off and looked at the glass. He threw it off to the right and it bounced a few times.

Fixer slowly put his blaster down. He turned to the left and was startled, he began shooting but he was quickly pushed up against a tree by Grievous. "You've got good aim," Grievous said, I figured he meant the eye, "Too bad you're clones, I could've used you." Grievous was blown away by Scorch shooting an anti-armor round at him.

"Get your helmet," I yelled to Scorch. Scorch scrambled for his helmet, trying to get up at the same time. When he reached his helmet as he grabbed it he was quickly swept away and thrown to the ground in an instant. Fixer quickly took out his sniper attachment and set his rifle up. Grievous had his lightsabers out by now and was ready to let the sleek lights fall into Scorch's head, killing him in an instant, when his left arm lightsaber was shot out of his hand by Fixer. Grievous turned to Fixer and started to walk towards him saying, "That's twice you've hit something that I care about, I believe it's time for you to die!"

"Fixer, your vibroblades can block lightsaber attacks, distract him for awhile, Scorch grab the saber," I said, I had to take my helmet off for a moment so Scorch could hear me, he nodded, I ran for his helmet. When I got the helmet Scorch handed me the lightsaber, I gave him the helmet. I scrambled around for the button and turned it on and slowly walked towards Grievous.

Fixer was putting up a good fight, of course Fixer's always well when it comes to melee fighting. I sneaked up behind Grievous and took a swing at his back, he suddenly screamed. He spun around and kicked me right in the side of my head, the pain throbbed and soon all faded to black.


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Note: Thanks to Shadowani for the review. I would really like to see some more reviews though so I know what I am doing wrong.**

Chapter III Day 788 0917 hours-Kachiro Forest-Clone Wars- Kashyyyk

I woke up with no one in front of me; I looked around wondering what happened to me. I saw Fixer on a small computer operated by the power in his DC-17; there on the computer was an overview of the area around us from the air. I looked over at Scorch who had a sniping position set up at a fallen tree. "What happened?" I asked Fixer.

"Grievous knocked you unconscious, then he escaped." He replied.

"How did he knock me unconscious?"

"Is your helmet on?" Scorch joked.

"How long have I been out?"

"About ten, maybe fifteen minuets." Fixer answered.

I nodded, "What are your plans?" I asked Fixer.

He closed up the small computer and put it in his backpack and replied, "We called another gunship it should be here in…" I interrupted him, "No we'll have the same thing happen to us again. Grievous is trying to cripple the air force by killing every gunship one by one. Cancel the gunship order and tell them to land where they are. If they refuse, explain the situation and state your name. The freedom of Kashyyyk will be made by foot from here on out."

Fixer nodded and put on his helmet, obviously calling the gunship. I walked up to Scorch and leaned on the same fallen tree.

"Anyone pass by yet?" I asked him.

"No." he replied.

I got off the tree and began walking away.

"Okay, wrap it up we're moving out."

"Where to?" he asked.

"Our objective."

"What about the gunship?" He called back.

"It's not coming."

We continued our path on foot and followed the path closer to the frontlines. With random sounds of breaking twigs and footsteps our reflexes were jumpy but we knew what was making most of the sounds, and so far nothing was following us.

To break the speechless silence Scorch as usual spoke out.

"I wonder if this will be a giant frontline battle where it's thousands against thousands or if it'll be just us against the whole army as it usually is."

"Scorch we don't always fight large armies," replied Fixer.

I held my breath for the time in between the replies of Fixer and Scorch fearing another argument.

"Oh, yeah," Scorch replied with a challenging tone. _Oh boy._

"What about the Prosecutor in the Chaykin Cluster?"

"Oh…"replied Fixer with the sound of being beaten in an argument, "Well we normally shouldn't expect battles with us against whole armies, if you remember 62 we are an elite…" Scorch suddenly interrupted Fixer's speech while mimicking him at the same time, "Squad unit, that take on covert operations in the darkest, and most dangerous places in the galaxy fighting the forces that are against the Republic and threat the democracy of blah, blah, blah, blah, BLAH!"

I finally breathed knowing that this fight wasn't going to be a personal matter.

We could see the sky clearly now though we weren't out in the open field yet, the pathway there was clear.

"Okay Delta's we'll take a break here, now is the time to reload, take a breath, check your ammo, balance the amount of ammo between us," Scorch once again interrupted but he didn't interrupt Fixer this time, it was me, "Pack explosives, check grenades, clean the visor yeah, yeah, yeah, we've done it a thousand times and we've done it alone. Lighten up Boss."

It was good to hear Scorch's sense of humor coming back; he wasn't being that funny but at least he was feeling better about Sev, maybe.

I was checking my ammo when I saw over to my right a small communications base with nothing but metal walls, a communications satellite on top, and a metal door.

"Fixer, stay with Scorch if I'm not back in five minuets, charge in with safeties off." I whispered.

Fixer nodded in response and watched me put my helmet on, grab my gun and walk to the door. When I reached the door I found that there was no security console so it didn't need a number code and a breach charge could be heard too easily, so I put away my gun ejected my vibroblade and stabbed the direct center of the door and pulled out some wires. The door automatically opened and I was revealed with another dull and boring metal wall but this wall was part of a hallway, the hallway went to my left and I could hear the distant sounds of wookies.

"Delta's I think we got slavers, hold your position till I'm sure," I said.

"Copy that," Fixer replied.

I slowly crept to the door at the end of the hallway on the far wall. When I neared the door I could see a shadow, a tall shadow, and holding a gun. I grabbed the figure in the doorway and slammed him into the wall right next to me and lifted up my D.C. to his face.

"What are you doing!" he asked quickly scared for his life.

It took me a second to realize it but I finally noticed this was a clone trooper. I lowered my D.C. and asked him the exact thing with a "here" at the ending of my sentence.

"I'm guarding this doorway, sir." he replied.

"Who gave you this command?"

"My officer."

I looked puzzled until I looked into the doorway that the clone trooper was guarding. I found a large room with a holo map in the center over viewing the ongoing battle, with wookies, Tarrful, and A.R.C.s.

"Deltas, good news come in and hold your fire. It looks like we've got help from the local A.R.C. troopers, yes Scorch we're doing this one with a somewhat bigger army than three clones."

I shortly got a loud response from Scorch, "What! A.R.C.s stink we're still gonna lose the battle and you know it!"


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter IV- Day 788- 0938 hours- Clone Wars- Republic Comm. Base- Kahyyyk

"Okay Delta 38, what were your mission objectives?" asked the A.R.C. leader.

I walked up to the large holo map in the center of the room, pointed at our target and said, "This building here is our main target but," I was interrupted again by a nearby A.R.C. trooper saying, "Then lets go down there and finish them off." I started charging towards him. The A.R.C. leader was about to charge towards me but Fixer put his arm out in front of him. I proceeded towards the trooper once again and by time he reached the door I had slammed him into the wall.

I shouted to him harshly, "I met a clone once that insulted me. I was ready to kill him but the enemy got to him first. Now I wouldn't expect another insult from someone who is in even better training than a clone trooper and is just under the best types of clones ever to set foot onto a battlefield,"

The clone just stared at me or at least I thought he did, as you couldn't see past the visor, the unexpressional helmet made it seem like I shut him up so I slowly released my grasp on him. He continued to stay there.

I walked over to the map where the rest joined me, "As I was saying A.R.C. leader this is where we were to hit, but I decided to hit this base here," and I pointed to where I decided to attack, "The hill gives us protection against any spotters in the main separatist base so we can't be seen."

Fixer spoke out, "The only thing we have to worry about is the charge to the base if we're not spotted then we'll be good."

Then Scorch, "Unless some of the droids in the base next to the hill report being taken over."

"What are you guys exactly," asked one A.R.C.

Scorch immediately responded, "Ever heard of suicide squads?"

We were set up outside near the tree line where we were waiting for Fixer to find the base so we knew which way to run. Fixer was looking through a pair of electro binoculars to find the base. I walked up to the A.R.C. leader who was standing about ten feet from the line with his men and asked, "How long will it take for your men to get ready?"

"About five, maybe seven minuets, has your man located the base?"

"Not yet but be ready to move out."

"Yes, sir."

As he turned around I called out to him, "A.R.C. leader." He turned around quickly.

"Yes, sir?" he said.

"Try to make contact with General Yoda, if you do tell him where we are attacking and that we may need backup."

"Yes, sir, oh Delta Lead, call me A.R.C. 1."

I looked around and soon shouted out to Fixer, "Fixer!" He looked away from his electro binoculars and looked around. He soon saw me he, walked up towards me and said, "Yes."

"Where is 62, have you seen him?"

Fixer pointed towards a tree with many branches and many leaves. I walked over to the tree, climbed it, and sat on a branch just above Scorch. I found him taking apart his D.C. to make sure it was ready for the upcoming battle.

I switched my visor to only speaking to Scorch so Fixer wouldn't hear the conversation; I figured we could possibly get into an argument in the upcoming sentences. "Did Fixer locate the base yet?" he asked.

"Not yet, but be ready to move out." I replied.

There was a slight pause so in between it I looked out over the field and could see the final fallback position of the separatist base easily. Scorch then replied calmly, "Do you think Fixer cares about Sev and the brotherhood between our squad?"

I replied carefully and calmly, "Look Scorch, you and Sev are two of the closest clones I have ever seen, and you two keep the squad alive, you two are the human part of the squad you have more of the human characteristics. Fixer and I am more by-the –book, as much as Fixer may seem like he doesn't care for Sev, inside him there is at least a small, and possibly very small bond to him but he doesn't express it. I'm sure he cares for both Sev and the whole squad."

Scorch took a couple seconds at Fixer and then looked at me, "I always feel like there is something about him that I can't completely trust, but I know I should."

"We all distrust each other from time to time Scorch. You may not always trust Fixer, and Fixer may not trust you or Sev. As much as we may trust each other, we all rely on each other too. At the Kachiro Bridge we were all down besides Sev, and he revived Fixer first. And he revived him first because he trusted him, and the current situation called for it." I paused.

Scorch responded, "I know what you mean but do you ever get that feeling that Fixer is up to something. Or the feeling that if any of us turned against the squad it would be Fixer."

"No," I replied.

"Oh." He said surprised.

"Don't worry about it though, all I ask of you is to trust Fixer to help you as much as Sev would. I do not care if you think anything of Fixer that is evil or that he may turn evil, I just want you to trust him when you know you need to."

Scorch nodded and then I heard from Fixer, "Boss I spotted the base."

"Good work Fixer, prep your weapons and be ready to charge out, where is the base?"

"It's three hundred meters north east, a bit closer to east though."

"Good, tell the A.R.C. leader to ready his men."

"Copy that."


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter V-Day 788-0943 Hours-Clone Wars- Kashyyyk

I had heard all about the A.R.C. troopers, how famous they were, heard about their battles, their weaponry, but I never saw them really fight completely on the ground. Except for a Null A.R.C. or two. I either saw the A.R.C.s flying or hovering over the ground just a little, but never, ever did I see their feet on the ground during combat. I just wondered if they fought like we did and that day, I found out.

"Delta Lead, my men are set to charge awaiting your command." Said A.R.C. 1.

Fixer called out. "Sir, Scorch and I are ready."

"Good, be careful they will probably spot us and fire artillery at us so be ready." I said.

I was ready also, ready for combat and ready to possibly meet death. I knew where to go but I have problems with open fields. One, as I mentioned earlier artillery. Two, you are not really sure when to go because you know that so many men are going to get killed sooner or later. We only had twenty-three men, including my squad. I stood there ready to run and so did everyone else. I twitched every time I was about to say it and paused. Finally I blurted it out. "GO, GO, GO!"

We moved out quickly. The A.R.C.s were moving much faster than us because of their lighter armor. But lighter armor means easier deaths. Either way we had to keep up. "Deltas put away your DCs and carry your pistols until we reach the base it will let us run faster." I commanded.

My squad did as they were told. As we got closer I noticed there was no artillery firing but I should have not thought that, because immediately the barrage kicked in. It was very sporadic and did not hit any of us luckily. But when we got to the borders of the base it got a bit different than no gunfire whatsoever.

First, I switched to my DC and so did my squad. The first shot came from an A.R.C. support trooper with four turret guns mounted over his chest being held up by his shoulders. He took off the front panel of a S.B.D., or a Super Battle Droid and also disabled the shield to a Destroyer Droid, also known as D. Droids to Scorch. Scorch jumped at the S.B.D. and stabbed the large red eye, immediately killing the droid. While A.R.C. 1 shot both small eyes of the D. Droid.

"Nice shot A.R.C. 1." I said.

Fixer switched his DC attachment to sniper rifle and began to pop enemy soldiers on top of the building. Scorch took out his anti-armor attachment and I could tell that he was smiling behind that mask of his ready to blow away any enemy that got in his sight.

"Save those Scorch, we'll need them later." I ordered.

"When?" He shouted back trying to talk over the constant gunfire.

"As soon as we meet something big enough that we need anti-armor shells to blow it up."

"That time better be soon, I'm dying to hear a big kaboom."

As we closed in on the base our men leaned up against the first wall we came upon. Over to my left was a pile of crates. The building shape was very simple, a perfect square.

The gunshots soon stopped, as the droids could not see us underneath the ledge. So they decided to lob in thermal detonators, which were accurately lobbed on the ground so the explosion would definitely hit us.

"Grenade!"

The men all turned around and crouched down and awaited the blast, I slowly counted, 1,2,3,4… nothing happened.

_A DUD!_

_A DUD!_

Immediately after I thought those words I heard low charging sound erupt and became even louder in a few seconds. To my right a large yellow explosion was forming near the end of the wall. Just after that I saw the whole line of clones next to me collapse and soon enough the large yellow plasma charge hit me and I was forced to my knees.

_S.B.D.s_, I thought and yelled out at the same time. The clones to my right, which included Fixer, Scorch, and A.R.C. 1 all turned to the left and began charging at the droids. The S.B.D. that hit me did not go down easy and by the time I got up he hit me again and I was incapacitated for now, I groaned out, "Scorch…. uh…"

"Hang on boss I got to finish him off," replied Scorch. Though he could not see that there were three more S.B.D.s behind him!

I could barely talk, for when you are incapacitated you are obviously in large amounts of pain and it's hard to talk anyways in it. But I managed to utter one word from my voice, "kaboom."

"YES, ALL RIGHT." shouted Scorch.

Eventually, small flaming, shells flew above me in the shape of an arc and small but large explosions came into my visor. Finally all four were gone and the remaining A.R.C. troopers, which still had all twenty three soldiers left, were finishing off the enemy battle droids on top of the building.

As Fixer was reviving I was laying down so my head was out from underneath the ledge of the building. I saw some tiny little red eyes pop out from on top of the building, it was a mangaurd. Five of them jumped off of the roof. They all did their flipping jump and began to come straight for Fixer, who had no idea of them right above him. Suddenly a gust of wind came and knocked all five of them back, it was General Yoda! Yoda popped off of the roof and fought four at once and killed them in ten seconds. I was revived in time and when I got up, looked around for the fifth one and saw Scorch, holding it's staff as the mangaurd pushed downward. But Scorch flipped it over then took it's staff and stabbed it into it's torso area. He then took out his vibroblade and stabbed the face, and stabbed it again, and again, and again, and again, repeating until droid pats were all over his visor. Finally the droid blew up as he slowly walked away, everyone was dead silent, even General Yoda. His visor wipers had a tough time getting all the droid parts off of his helmet which never happens, that was the first time I had seen those wipers have trouble getting junk off of the mask.

_How many times did he stab it?_

_I have never seen such rage come from anyone, not even Sev._

"Okay, A.R.C. 1, let's go over this one more time." I said as we looked over the interior of the small building through a small holo-map.

"Okay." he agreed.

"I'll place a breaching charge on the door, once the door blows open, you toss a thermal detonator in and then we move in. You'll take your men in and stick along the left wall and move left. I'll move Delta Squad along the right side of the wall and move right. General Yoda, do you have any suggestions on what we should do?"

He nodded and said. "Move up the center and cause a distraction, I will. Well planned the mission is, but I would suggest taking a few of the A.R.C. troopers on the same side of the Delta's. Even the amount of firepower on each side this will."

"Very well," I said.

The A.R.C. troopers lined up on the left side of the door, my men and a few A.R.C.s lined up on the right side. We all crouched down and I grabbed a thermal detonator from my belt, tossed it over to A.R.C. 1 and he nodded. I got up from my crouched position went up to the door and pulled out a circular breaching charge. The charge fit on the door easily, as all clone commando technology works, it is advanced yet at the same time so simple and works for practically anything. The charge had three buttons on it in the shape of an upside down triangle. I pushed all three buttons at the same time, then the top two, and then pushed and held the bottom button for about one second. Then I released it and went back over to my original spot and all of us turned our backs to the door to avoid damage to our armor. Before the door was blown open by excellent clone commando technology I heard Scorch whisper, "rule number one, Boss."

I smiled behind my mask as memories came flowing into my mind at amazing speeds as I thought back to our training in Kamino before the war started. Rule number One was the first thing Sergeant Walon Vau taught us, it was one of Scorch's favorite rules, it was one of the short ones. These are important rules that you will probably always remember and you will remember in situations. And as I thought in my head finally the rule came to me: _Kill em' before they kill you._

It is a simple sentence and rule of being a clone commando, which presents what we do almost every day of our lives.

The door breached and that takes about three seconds. I could not believe that I remembered so much about our training in three seconds.

The door blew open and A.R.C. 1 rolled the thermal detonator into the base. Both sides moved into the base staying along the left and right sides of the wall hoping not to get shot by the crazy gunfire which was ridiculously shooting at the doorway still. When we were both opposite from each other I looked at A.R.C. 1 and we both nodded. I tossed in an E.C.D. Electrical Charged Detonator, a small grenade with a blue top that zaps any droid for an amount of time and renders them helpless. It was pretty much a flash bang for droids. Moments after the E.C.D. was tossed the enemy blurted out mechanical, meaningless words of jibber, along with shouts and cries. All the battle droids in that area were fried, but the S.B.D.s were still all standing. I began to shoot the nearest S.B.D. and quickly took him down. The men on the other side jumped onto the elevated platform the droids were on and began hitting them at close range. I jumped up there too and began stabbing them with my vibroblade, the men behind me followed. As the droids began to go down, large rumbles filled the room and four large chunks of metal fell onto the platform, crushing the remaining droids remaining near by. I gazed at the four, square looking, blue, striking, metal hunks, I immediately knew what they were: Super Battle Droid Dispensers.

In only a moment A.R.C.1 walked up to me and said. "We'll take it from here sir."

A.R.C.1 signaled at four of his troops and they walked up to the dispensers, which strangely had not released any of it's S.B.D.s yet, for which I was thankfully happy, and placed a charge about the size of a breaching charge on each one.

"Clear the area," said A.R.C. 1.

We charged out of the area and hid behind nearby crates and consoles. In only a few seconds we all heard four large explosions shake and rumble the entire building. The four bombs exploding the four dispensers created such a large explosion. I came out from my spot after the sound went away and saw nothing but settling dust, some debris on the floor, and an even harder day ahead.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter VI- Day 788- 0958 Hours- Clone Wars- Separatist Base- Kashyyyk

Okay, so the A.R.C. troopers were quite fascinating when it came to ground fighting. They are better in the sky that is for sure, they always shoot guns out of a ship better than the ground, but they impressed me on the normal battlefield. They impressed me when it came to attacking positions that do not know that you are there, that is what they are mainly made for: Advanced Recon. We were specifically made for winning the war and being the ones that do the sabotaging before, during and after battles. We were the best of the best. I can honestly say that the A.R.C. troopers are underneath us when it comes to the rank (with the exception of the Null A.R.C.s of course.)

"Great job A.R.C. troopers, why don't we get hardware like that," I asked.

"You don't have those," A.R.C. 1 asked confused.

"No, we always have to set demo charges," Scorch replied. "Can I have a few of those? I want to study them."

An A.R.C. who was listening nearby answered. "Yeah sure, here." And he handed him a charge.

"That's strange." A.R.C 1 mentioned.

"Strange?" I asked.

"Yeah, I would expect Republic Commandos to have the best weaponry out there it seems strange that we have a detonator better than yours."

"Yes. That is strange." The thought began to bug me now.

"Whatever," I said trying to forget about the problem and went to the current situation at hand.

"Okay, Delta Squad, look for ammo and stock up on any weapons you can find."

I walked over to General Yoda. "Thank you for helping us out earlier general," I said as I saluted him.

"We would've had a lot of trouble with those manguards if you didn't show up when you did." Fixer added in.

Yoda replied, "Handle yourselves good, you did. A great leader some day I see you will be. Watch your friend though, I would recommend. Much anger in him, there is." I nodded, Yoda was right; Scorch killed that mangaurd like it told him that Sev was dead.

"Found an ammo dumps Boss." Scorch called out, "It looks like blaster rifles, like smuggled rifles sir." I took one of the rifles; it had a weird insignia on it.

"A.R.C. 1!" I called out. The skinny armored clone quickly came up to me.

"Yes sir?" he said.

"Can you spare a trooper to send this rifle to the clone advisor of Delta Squad?"

"Yes sir."

"His name is Clone Advisor 01/425." I gave him the rifle and quickly he gave it to a nearby A.R.C. I could tell that they were taking and the other clone nodded, he left the building shortly after. The one thing I liked about A.R.C. 1 was he showed respect for Delta Squad I never found too many respectful clones but most of the A.R.C.s knew what respect was.

A.R.C. 1 came back to me and we found an ammo dump full of grenades, and battle droid blasters. The two of us crouched down, and sorted through our packs, making sure everything would be ready for the next fight.

"Have you ever met one of those Null A.R.C. troopers?" A.R.C. 1 asked me.

"_One _of _those _Null A.R.C. troopers, I take it you don't know much about them, if I were you I would put more respect in that sentence soldier."

"Sorry sir."

"It's fine to me, but I would recommend it if you were in their presence. And yes, I have met the Null A.R.C.s I worked on a mission with Ordo once."

"So what are they?"

"To tell you completely could take me awhile but in short they are the best A.R.C. troopers out there, I'm surprised you: A.R.C. 1 has never heard of them. Anyways they are as deadly as a clone commando and the leader Null: Ordo ranks above clone commandos, including Omega and Delta Squad sadly."

"Sadly?"

"Well, since commandos are known to be the best of the best, we don't like to get outmatched that often. And Omega is my favorite Republic Commando Squad besides my squad mates. They are as good as us when it comes to the R.C.'s. Ordo outranks both of us, but it is said that our squad truly is better than the Null A.R.C.s. We were trained better."

"Oh, so you think fondly of Omega Squad?"

"Yes, if our squad was to die I would rather have Omega Squad take over more than anyone else, no offense."

I walked over to Fixer after finishing my discussion with A.R.C. 1. I was about to say something but Fixer mentioned a sentence that was similar to mine. "What do you think happened to Scorch out there?"

"I'm not sure, I thought I had calmed him down but," I paused. "I don't know."

"Neither do I, what do you mean by calmed down?"

"I talked some things over with him and he was feeling better."

"Well, maybe fighting the enemy reminded him that Sev is no longer with us for the time being."

"Maybe."

Suddenly I heard an A.R.C. trooper call out, "Sirs, I found a holo map."

_Wow, they even respect my troops._

I could tell they respected Fixer as well as I by calling the both of us sirs.

We followed the A.R.C. The map was large, covering the whole final battlefield that we were on. "Looks like you guys picked the right base," said A.R.C. 1.

"Okay I got an idea, gather up the A.R.C.s." I commanded A.R.C. 1.

With everyone in the room I began, "Okay we have a large amount of hills right around the base we our currently in. If we were to attack the seps final fallback base we would definitely be wiped out, their forces have been weakened by us but they still have a very large number compared to how many of us there is. We can shorten the droid numbers by transmitting a message to the final Sep base," A.R.C. 1 interrupted me surprisingly, "Forgive me for interrupting you sir but wouldn't they just come after us then?"

I couldn't help but put a smile on my face at his remark, "They would but they wouldn't put all their forces on us. If they thought that there was just a bunch of normal clones here fighting the droids and they just need some more droids to hold them back they would only send a squad or so. On their way here we go around the main hill and meet them."

One A.R.C. asked. "Won't the droids go around the hill?"

"Which direction takes the least amount of time," I asked.

"Right up the center."  
"Right."

There was a slight pause.

Scorch decided to help in the confusion. "Droids are dumb, they find the easy way out.

I continued. "Those are large hills near this base, it could take some time for droids to go around."

"All right." agreed A.R.C. 1. "It looks like we have an advantage."

"Agree with Delta Squad, I do, the plan is very strategic."

"Okay A.R.C.s, Delta Squad, let's load up and get ready to move out. Be ready in twenty minutes."

I was overlooking the crowd when I heard Scorch's voice, "General Yoda sir, seeing that you're a Jedi Master, can you sense my comrade?" His voice was calmer right now.

"Grieve for your loss, I do." Yoda replied. "Hard to sense differences in clones I'm afraid though." Scorch made a wise reply, "But don't Jedi sense humans by spirit or connection with the force, he's no different than human except the fact that he looks like Jango Fett. Clone Commandos all have different personalities, he's a hunter of sort." Yoda closed his eyes and thought or meditated or did as a Jedi does, "Sense his life, I do. But he is far from here, very far. He is not in pain, except for his loss. Sensing sadness from him, I am."

"Thank you General Yoda."

He saluted and regrouped with me, he seemed happy, "That's good news," I said.

Scorch kneeled down next to me and took off his helmet, so did I. I could see a smile on my face as he peeled the helmet off. "Yeah," he said, "he could be on so many planets, but the way this war has gone, and the places we seem to always reach, there's still a chance."

Now I knew he was happier, he had a lot less anger since he killed that Mangaurd. The place we were in was more like a supply base but it had comm. links so we figured it was a comm. base until droids started bringing ammo in here. "Hey, Delta Squad, I found D.C. clips for you guys." Called out an A.R.C.

"What?" I asked the A.R.C. with large surprise. I got up and began walking towards him.

"You know DC-17s the…" I cut him off and pushed him aside.

"No! I know what those are, but why do _droids_ have DCs." I looked in the corner of the building to make sure he was not mistaken. He was not. In the corner, stashed away in a crate, were DC-17s. I walked back over to where I had my stuff and put my helmet on.

I switched my comm. and yelled out, "Advisor!"

"What is it Delta Lead?" responded the Advisor.

I angrily paced the room. "Since when do _droids _carry DC-17 blaster rifles!"

He paused. "38, what are you talking about?"

"We found a crate of DC-17s in a comm. base that the separatists are using for supply storage."

"Hmmm, things are getting weird around here 38. But you don't have time to worry about this, send silhouette data on the crate, guns, and any other weapons that are beyond the normal ones you see in battle."

"Copy that."

"And 38, where are you for the moment?"

"There is a large set of hills, south-east of the final Separatist fallback base. We captured the base, with the help of A.R.C. troopers, and are now getting ready to take on the next objective."

"What is your next objective?"  
"Don't you normally give me the orders Advisor?"

"Yeah," joined in Scorch. "Are you getting demoted advisor?"

"Negative 62."

"Well if you are, I'm just the guy to take your place."

Fixer added, "I'm sure he'll remember that Scorch."

"Of course he will! I'm his favorite clone, right buddy?"

Advisor didn't add to the conversation, "I'll look into the situation with the weapons, in the mean time Delta Lead I'll be busy so I'll leave the choices to you."

"Roger, 38 out."

This mission was getting stranger and stranger. First, General Grievous is in a smuggling vessel. Then, we find modified advance technology blasters. After, we find our own guns in a separatist ammo dump. And finally, the Advisor is acting strange.

A.R.C. 1, Scorch and I gathered around Fixer, who was seated at a desk attempting to send out a transmission to the Separatist base.

"Almost there," said Fixer. "I just need to hack their passcode."

The noise of a small click entered into my ears, and then I heard the voice of the Advisor, "38, I forgot to get my answer, what is your next objective?"

"To draw out enemy droids inside the final Separatist fallback base, this will make taking the base easier."  
"How will you draw them out?"

"Forty here is working on that as we speak. He is hacking a separatist communications device which will allow him to communicate freely with the droids. He will tell them that this base here has fallen under attack and needs help."

"What about your voice?"

"We're commandos sir, we already have that under control."

"Very well, that is all."

"Did you get anything from those guns?" Scorch asked.

"Which one?"  
"The black one."

"It's very dangerous, shoots hot red plasma, something around 50 shots per clip, has a mini scope which does not go too far. It can melt Destroy Droid shields in one shot for good."

Scorch immediately replied. "Oooh, I'm getting one."

"Why?" I said.

"If a gun like that could melt D-Droid shields, think how much I could take out if I modified that into my AA blaster!"

I shook my head while smiling, _Ah Scorch_.

"Boss, I'm ready to send the transmission." Fixer said.

"Go ahead and send it Fixer." I replied.

Fixer pushed a few buttons and sent out the message.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter VII-Day 788-0110 Hours-Clone Wars-Seperatist Base-Kashyyyk

_Central Sereratist base are you coming in? This is Seperatsist base 013785, we are under heavy assault by clone troopers. Send help ASAP."_

ARC 1 shouted out to his bold troopers, "ARC troopers 5-10, you will be with Delta Squad. Troops 2-4 and 11-20," he paused in his speech, "My mistake, Delta Lead, do you want to pick?" He seemed to know his place as a clone, and he respected me a lot.

I replied. "You know your men more than I do, you choose ARC 1."

He saluted and continued his speech. "Right, 5-10 with Delta Squad, 2-4 and 11-20 with me."

We all left the base and began our ways around the hills. Both theams were on the sides of the hill and fit to fight. We could now see the sillouettes of the droids from what it looked like they had a good platton of droids, and 10 SBDs. I switched my comlink over to ARC 1. "ARC 1, this is Delta Lead, how tough are SBDs to you guys?"

"SBDs? They put up a pretty tough fight for us."

"You may have some trouble soon."

"SBDs?"

"Ten of them." There was a pause.

Finally he responded. "That sounds fun."

The droids were in plain view by now, and besides the SBDs and battle droids, there were 5 destroyer droids and two mangaurds. Too bad General Yoda had already left to help elsewhere.

"Delta Squad, I want all members to put Anti-Armor attachments on all DCs, and hold fire until two EMP grenades are thrown."

"Got it, Boss." Scorch replied.

The droids were now coming up the hill but that was the hard part: waiting. SBDs were a real pain but killing droids is fun. Though, if you attacked in the wrong way, it could cost you the entire squad. Worse was waiting when you could not see your enemy. The footsteps sounded correct, near the top of the hills.

"Okay, lets head to the front."

Both squads met at the right time and we both moved up the hill quickly. I could see the SBDs now but they didn't notice anything. _Stupid Droids. Here goes nothing._

Fixer and I both threw our ECDs (Electrical Charged Detonator) right at the SBDs. The usual stutter of words and droid screams came out and the battle began. ARC 1 charged right at an SBD and ripped the arm off, the gun arm. I took down three SBDs with my Anti-Armor attachment.

"ARCs, focus all fire on the SBDs, then move to the Destroyer Droids," I said. _Three left._

Fixer nocked one over and started gutting it. He then jumped up and AA'ed the other one. Scorch decided to finish the last one by ripping off the gun arm and shoot it with it repeatedly.

"Move to the D-Droids!" ARC 1 Shouted.

Fixer was slicing off the legs of legs of one, and Scorch shot down the last one with his Anti-Armor grenades.

"Finish off that last bodygaurd!"

One bodygaurd that was alive was causing quite a bit of havok. When I got a glimpse of him he had an ARC trooper on the end of his staff. ARC 1 saw the bodygaurd and angrily threw one of his mini-explosive charges right onto the droids face. Seconds later chunks of droid guts splashed onto my visor.

I looked over at the ARC leader and nodded to him. He nodded back and Scorch shouted out. "Man! Can I get one of those?"

"Not now Scorch, finish off these droids."

I saw Fixer with droid blood wiping off of his visor. Behind Fixer I could see flying above him, Battle Droids.

"Fixer, look out!" I shouted. He turned around to see the strange droids.

"What is that?" Scorch asked.

"I don't know, just shoot it." I said.

These battle droids were a little bit more bulky in the armor and had a gun arm, though the gun was not too deadly.

Most of the droids were down when a Genosian fighter flew by and dropped a large chunk of metal on the hill.

"What is _that_?" Scorch asked.

"I don't care, blow it up!" I yelled.

"Yes, sir!" Scorch said with a smile.

Doors on the metal chunk opened up and out of it walked a Dwarf Spider Droid. "Boss! That's a Dwarf Spider Droid Dispenser. That's how all of those Spider Droids kept appearing." Fixer said.

"That's not good. Scorch, how long will this take!"

"About thrity seconds." He replied.

"Everyone, concentrate fire on the Spider Droid. Bring that thing down!"

We were down to fifteen men now, I looked over at Fixer and saw him surrounded by three of those flying Battle Droids. I quickly ran by an ARC and took three of his mini-bombs and tossed them to Fixer. Fixer set the charges and jumped down as chunks of metal flew right over him. He got up unscratched.

Scorch finished the demo kit. "Charge is hot sir, I recommend you blow it now before I do it myself." I pulled out the trigger and pressed the red button. Scorch watched his masterpiece come to life and said. "That's so beautiful."

The explosion took the Spider Droid with it, which was good, we only had a few droids left to worry about. After the battle there were 12 of us now, "Nice Work ARC 1, your men helped a lot. If you weren't there we would have to do that alone, that's not easy."

He replied, "Thank you Delta Lead..." he was interrupted by the rumbling of Geonsian fighters and Flying Battle Droid Jets.

The Geonosian fighters dropped two Spider Droid Dispensers, a SBD dispenser, and a Battle Droid Dispenser. I looked over at Scorch and tossed him a large demo kit, I also threw Fixer one too. "Fixer, get rid of that Spider Droid Dispenser. Scorch get working on the SBD. ARC 1, see if you can work on those smaller dispensers. ARC troopers under my command, cover us."

I ran over to the other large SDD, and started setting the charge. _30...27_ I counted mentally..._25...22...20. _The flying Battle Droids started to hit the ARCs protecting me so I took out an Anti-Armor shell loaded it and hit one of the droids. _17...15..._ I heard Scorch. "The charge is set."

I turned around and hit the trigger. _13...11...10...9...8... _

"Boss, my charge is ready!" said Fixer. I blew the bomb and signaled for Scorch to work on the Battle Droid Dispenser.

_7...6...5...4...3...2..._ I was suddenly blown off my feet and rammed into the dispenser. After recovering strength to turn around I saw a spider droid coming right at me. As it's turret charged up to shoot me, I stood still.

Authors Note: Please Leave Reviews or Constructive Criticism.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter VIII-1045 Hours-Clone Wars-Seperatist Base Hills-Kashyyyk

Good thing about fighting droids in a war is they don't know anything they're not told. Humans can learn stuff by instinct or knowledge, droids just do what they are told and fight how they are told. So once you know what they will fight like in a battle you can put tricks up your sleeves. Droids do not have tricks, and I am sure that they do not have sleeves.

The blast was just a few feet away when I rolled to the right and ran for my life as the last Dwarf Spider Droid Dispenser blew away with everytihng within 10 feet of it. Calm had finally come for at least 20 seconds.

I walked over to ARC 1, who was scouting out the final Seperatist base with some electrobinoculars. "What do you see?" I asked.

He responded calmly. "Platoons of ground and flying Battle Droids, looks like we have a third battle coming up."

I called Fixer over. "What do you need sir?"

"Start sniping the flying Battle Droids over there."

Scorch had finished his charge of the final Battle Droid Dispenser, "Demo is ready Boss, can you please start the fireworks?"

I nodded and blew the charge. "We wanted just enough to lighten their forces not the whole army." Said ARC 1.

"I wonder if it is the base they want or the stuff in it to make them send armies after us?" I replied.

Scorch walked in to join the coversation by saying. "Maybe both."

I tapped an ARC on the shoulder and asked him to get me as many of those black rifles as he could. He saluted and rushed away. When he returned he had about eight guns along with five clips for each. I aimed the gun out at one of the flying battle droids and took a shot, the large red beam was accurate and deadly. It took the droid's head right off. But I found a rapid fire switch which made the gun a lot less accurate. I walked back over to see Scorch and Fixer sniping together, but not talking.

"How are you feeling?" I asked after switching my comlink to only Scorch.

"Better." Scorch replied. "When I get caught up in battles I can either get posssible revenge, or forget about Sev." He replied.

"That's good."

"When I spoke with General Yoda, he said..."

"I heard, it's good to know he's alive, just do one thing for me, don't go nuts on finding him. I promise you though, if we don't find him during the war, I will then do all I can to find him, even on free time during the war I will spend time on finding Sev."

"Thanks, hey, do you have any sniper clips?"

I gave him some and left him to his sniping as I returned to ARC 1. "I'm sure it's none of my buisiness, but what's made your yellow striped squadmate so violent?" He asked.

I found that strange for a clone to ask something related to personal life within a brotherhood such as Clone Commandos. And I did not want to put the squad in jeperdy so I lied.

"Oh, that? He's just like that. He sometimes has a crazy killing frenzy in combat, but he still follows orders."

ARC 1 nodded and continued to view the field.

We had twelve clones left, 9 were ARC troopers. And we were up against who knew how many droids. From the looks of things, there were about fifty SBDs, fourty D-Droids, thirty battle droids, and ten Dwarf Spider Droids, the odds looked very, very, bad. The sniping wasn't helping much either, we had about ten minutes before the hill would be swarming with seps. I walked up to ARC 1. "The total count of droids is about one hundred twenty." I said.

"One hundred-twenty!" He replied, "I thought there would be a lot less left on Kashyyk."

"So did I. I've got Fixer and Scorch sniping down the Spider Droids, if any get killed they'll let me know."

The two did manage to take one of the Spider Droids down, which left us 119.

The seperatists were three minutees away, it was time to take formation. "Fixer, set up Anti-Armor on the left side, Scorch on the right."

"Got it Boss." said Scorch.

"When we run out form up on me."

"Copy that." said Fixer.

The ARCs were set up in prone positions in a straight line with ARC 1 and two behind me standing. I looked back at ARC 1. "Have your support gunners begin hitting the spider droids."

He nodded and replied. "Right away sir."

Seconds later gun shots came from three ARCs, one had four nozzles which shot at a normal pace, and two others that shot at a fast pace, which were mini-guns. I switched my comlink. "Advisor, Advoisor, are you there?"

It was all static on the other end. "Advisor!"

_Blast_

There was still no response, we were on our own. "Fixer and Scorch, while the ARC support gunners man down the spider droids, throw all grenades at the enemies, except flashbangs. Fixer take the left, Scorch the right, I'll take the middle."

"Why don't we call for backup?" Asked Scorch.

I only had two answers. "Signal is jammed and they wouldn't get here in time to save us anyways."

The first wave of droids were D-Droids in a line of fire the grenades helped a bit. We took down quite a few but the D-Droids were not breaking down easily. Scorch's side was falling by now.

"Right flank!" I shouted.

Two ARCs suppressed the right flank listening to ARC 1's command. Fixer's side was holding up fine. I took out the black blaster and put it at the slow rate of fire. I blasted it at a D-Droid and the shield melted! I completely forgot!

"ARC 1, get your men who have black rifles to shoot D-Droids with them, they pierce the shields!"

"Yes sir."

I continued shooting at the D-Droids, if this gun could pierce the shields and kill the droid too, it would be helpful. We would be able to melt down the D-Droids at least. But the line was no longer just D-Droids, the line was begining to be filled with SBDs along with Battle Droids and their flying brothers. The droids were begining to surround us by taking on the shape of an arc.

"Push them back! Don't let them surround us! PUSH THEM BACK!" I shouted.

The shouting of battle was now turning to screams of death.

"Ahhhhh, nooo!" Cried one ARC as a SBD shot his large white blast right through his leg.

"Help!!"

"We're going to die!"

The screams were getting worse, the Dwarf Spider Droids were now breeching the area.

"Scorch is down, aghh!" yelled Fixer as he took a hit from a Spider Droids double rockets. I went over to heal Scorch when a small grenade blew on me. I was almost down, only four ARCs were left. I took my last lok upwards at the droids advancing. An SBD stopped in front of me and started charging his arm gun. I continued to look at the faceless droid when he looked up and immediately lifted his arm to a spot behind me, but was shot. I tried to get up but my leg was weak from the explosion. ARC 1 stood in front of me and gave me his hand. As I got on my knees I saw the dangerous waves of droids that were coming at us look beyond us and they were either shot or ran away. And now bent over, getting up, I saw familiar white shiny armored people taking the victory for showing up late, with a little green general charging at the droids who were running to their exploding base in the distance.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter IX-Day 788-1700 Hours-Clone Wars-Striker Cafeteria-Above Kashyyyk

After the toughest day of battle since the Prosecuter Mission, Scorch, Fixer and I were sent to the cafeteria on the Med cruiser known as The Striker. I was in the middle of the line with Scorch behind me and Fixer behind him...

"So why didn't you revive me on time Boss?" Asked Scorch.

I shook my head and responded, "That hit to your head must have given you short term memory loss because I told you three times already Scorch. A grenade hit my leg."

"Oh yeah." He said.

"See you remember now!"

"Oh, the memory loss thing? The stupid med tech did that to me."

"Like I'll believe that."

After we were done getting food, we looked for a seat when we saw a clone wave at use to come over, there were not to many other seats so we sat down with them.

"That was some fight today, wasn't it?" He said .

Once I heard his voice I new who it was, it was like Jango Fett's but he had his own voice. "Yeah, it was, you guys held out great." I replied.

"Most of us didn't make it though."

"That's because this army is stupid enough not to give out Bacta Processing Implants, except to Clone Commandos. It was a plesure fighting with you guys today."

"If we meet again it would be an honor to fight with you."

After the meal we were sent to med. labs once more for a seconed and final checkup, then we went to our barracks where we slept. We had a room with another squad of clones, six of them . Our beds were the first ones on the right, the room was like a hallway and the beds went into the walls, they would stack up to three, then a couple more meters down the wall would be the second triple bunk after that, a wall. The wall opposite the bunks on the right wall was exactly the same. The clone troopers took the farthest beds possible so there wasn't any clones across from us. That night I hacked into my breifing cosole, which every bunk would receive and were useable, to an extent. If you were skilled enough you could hack into them, I dind't want to draw much attention obviously so I waited until everyone was asleep. Even though I was successful in hacking the console, I didn't even know where to go on this "internet."

"Scorch." I whispered in the dead of night.

"Boss?" He questioned. "What is it? It's in the middle of the night."

"Get up here."

Scorch started to climb. "What's this about?" he asked.

"You'll find out in a second." I replied.

"What are doing with that briefing console?" He asked from the confusion of the night.

"I hacked it, I need you to find bounties for me on it."

"Bounties?" He asked puzzled while rubbing his eyes awake.

"Yeah, online."

"Oh, of course."

By now we were both sitting Indian style looking at the console. When we got to the website we typed up "Delta RC-01/207 and sure enough, there were some heavy bounties.

"Scorch." I said. "Look at this one. 'A 10,000 Republic Credit reward will be given to whoever brings in Sev dead or alive to the planet of Geonosis. The bounty has been put up for the ruthless murdur of Sun Fac.' More like Assasinated." No bounties of Sev were announced turned in though. This told us nothing.

Scorch and I decided to go to sleep after searching for a while. I pulled the blankets up, turned to the side and looked at the clock on the console: 2400 hours. Day 788 was over.

You have now finished reading the first mission (campaign) of Star Wars Republic Commando 2 Rebellion. I just want to say a few things before I close. I went to check how many pages this thing covered in Microsoft Word and the campaign covered 26 pages. Not too many when you think about it. But these 26 pages have been nearly an entire year's work of writing, typing, re-writing, and re-typing. That did not include how much I thought up for the whole story. This campaign has been a lot of work for me. I want to be a writer when I grow up, that is why I started my sites originally. And some people have told me that I write these stories good. But I need more help than that. If you enjoyed this story (the first portion of it) please spread the word about it to anybody you know who would be interested. Any person who enjoyed Republic Commando and wants more, please tell them about this story. And maybe I can know what I am doing right and wrong. I have told myself that this book is my path to becoming a writer. If I can create and finish this book with so many good reviews I can tell myself that I can write. So please spread the word on this book. See you in campaign #2!

The Typer


	10. Campaign 2 Opening

Welcome to Campaign 2 of Republic Commando 2: Rebellion. This part of the story has been coming for as long as I have been writing this book practically. For you who have been waiting since I released the last chapter of Campaign 1, it has been a little over half a year I believe. So hopefully, this campaign will rock.  
To those who are new to this story, or have not read campaign 1, I suggest you go back to campaign 1, or chapter 1, and start from there.  
Thank you for reading this, and please tell me your thoughts about it. I can be reached through the review section or at Story Globe. Ask me in the review section on Fanfiction for the address. Thank you, and enjoy the campaign.

The Typer


	11. Chapter 10

Chapter X-Day 899-Clone Wars-0400 Hours-Planet is Unkown

The hologram in the middle of Republic Gunship #298 lit up the entire ship, even with all doors and panels shut. It was a dark, cold morning, I could tell by the way my HUD was fogging up.

"Rise and shine, Delta Squad. First of all, I would like to introduce the commando with you. He will be replacing 07, his number is RRC-93/122." Said the Advisor, who was showing himself through the hologram.

"RRC?" Fixer asked.

"Republic Reserve Commando." I replied.

Scorch was already in a form of anger, "You got us a replacement?"

"We have to Scorch," said Fixer, "All squads that loses a squad member, must have him replaced." He paused for a moment, "Regulations."

Scorch did not reply, none of us wanted a replacement, but we needed one. We held ourselves pretty good as a squad of three on Kashyyyk, but we had good help with the A.R.C. troopers.

"Second of all, you may wonder where you are." Continued the Advisor.

"Then where are we?" I said trying to get to the point.

"This is Dxun, a planet full of forestry."

"Great, another forest mission." Said Scorch.

"Unlike Kashyyyk, this place is known to only contain creatures, and the jungle is far more dense."

_Known?_

"A few days ago, we got a large power reading coming from this planet."

"So it's a recon mission." I replied.

"Sort of, we suspect if there is anything on this planet besides nature, it would be Mandalorians."

"A _large_ group of Mandalorians?" Fixer asked.

"Yes Four-Oh. The last known time large Mandalorians were seen was during a war that took place nearly five thousand years ago."

Twenty-Two spoke out, "The Mandalorian Wars."

"Correct Twenty-Two. So your mission is to verify what is here, Mandalorian or not, whatever it is is probably shouldn't be here. After that, you will receive new orders."

* * *

The four of us hooked our cabels up and slowly repelled down the Republic Gunship into pure darkness. We turned on our headlamps and moved into a box formation. I took the top right, Scorch was next to me, Fixer was behind me, and Twenty-Two was to his right.

"The large power reading is to the north. Republic Cruiser _Striker_ will be orbiting the nearby planet Onderon, we don't want to alarm you friends down there." The Advisor commented.

"We'll try to contact you as soon as possible." I replied.

"Roger that, Advisor out."

We watched the Gunship fly away and began moving north.

"So," Scorch called out, "you're a Republic _Reserve_ Commando?"

"Yes, sir." Twenty-Two replied.

"Does that mean, you have been in other squads besides this one?" Fixer questioned.

"Yes, sir."

I decided to come in, "You don't have to say 'sir' at the end of every sentance commando. You're one of us now, you're _not _part of a regular army. You are a part of a brotherhood. You have been in other squads, right?"

"Yes, s..." he stopped before he could say "sir".

"They were Commando squads, right?"

"Yes."

I could hear Scorch whisper to himself angrily, "Does he say anything else than 'yes' and 'sir'?"

"Settle down Scorch," Fixer said.

Twenty-Two heard him through the comlink. "Yes, I can."

"Ooo, he says 'I can' as well. Two more words," Scorch said snotfully.

"_Anyways_, didn't these squads welcome you as well? Didn't they make you feel like a normal brother?" I continued.

Twenty-Two replied shyly, "Not really. I'm a Reserve Commando. I don't stay with squads for too long, I stay until the squad dies or gets a full replacement."

Scorch spoke angrily and under his breath, "Hope he leaves soon then."

I could not take it anymore. "All right Scorch! If you have an attitude about this, don't take it out on him! As hard as it is for you to take this guy, he's..."

I was interrupted by Fixer who had been quiet most of the time, "Sir, detecting movement! Right ahead."

The four of us immediately went prone and started aiming down our DC sights.

"Where, I don't see anything?" said Twenty-Two.

"Switch to heat mode. Headlamps off boys." I commanded.

The squad reacted perfectly, but we saw nothing in heat mode.

"I don't see anything," Scorch applied.

"All right, put headlamps on." I said.

Finally we could see what our motion sensors picked up. Right in front of us, was a large beast with scrawny arms, spikes protruding out of it's back and razor sharp claws. Just as it was about to launch a blow right at my face a shadowy figure leaped off of a tree and flew onto the creatures neck. Holding on as tight as it could, it pulled out a sword-like object and repeatedly stabbed the head. The beast cried out in agony as it was dying. It did everything it could to save itself, swinging it's large clawlike arms at the back of it's head. But it didn't help, he couldn't reach behind his head. The figure took one last stab, and the beast finally fell.

"Stay low Delta's." I said.

The shadowy figure walked over to the body and cut out one of the large spikes coming out of the creatures back. It then left, and dissapeared into the forest.

Once we noted that the area was clear of any movements we walked towards the body.

"What is that thing?" Scorch asked.

"A Terenterak," Twenty-Two answered, "a deadly, viscious beats. It has been known to hunger on things high in the force. A single cut from it could poison you."

We saw some green looking smoke coming out of the deep wounds in the head. It smelled terrible, even through the filter system.

"Um, yeah," continued Twenty-Two, "they're bodily fluids are also, poisonous. So what do you think that thing was?"

"A Mandalorian." Fixer replied.

"A Mandalorian saved us?" Twenty-Two replied.

"That's what it looked like," Scorch commented, "though I have to say I have not seen armor like that before."

"I'm surprised a Mandalorian would try to save us."

"Why?" I asked Twenty-Two.

"Well, aren't most Mandalorians ruthless, savage, killers, practically beasts in human form?"

"No," I said slowly, "where did you hear that?"

"Mandalorian history, where else?" There was a lull in the conversation. "What, you guys think opposite?"

"_Very_ opposite," Scorch replied.

"I guess I was trained different."

"Forget about it, we need to get to our objective. We need to keep moving." I said, trying to get everyone back on track. But I could not help but wonder why a clone, a Mandalorian for that matter, would be trained to think _our_ nationality was savage beasts.

* * *

We continued north, hoping to follow the Mandalorian to his camp. Twenty-Two decided to ask something, "Why did the Mandalorian take the spike out of the Terenterak's back?"

Fixer decided to answer, "Well..."

He was interupted by Scorch, "Get down!"

"What is it?" I asked as the four of us flipped the headlights off and threw ourselves onto the ground.

"A fire, about fifteen meters ahead."

"That's our Mandalorian friends," I added.

I quickly made a plan. "Okay, they're surrounded by bushes, easy fight. Twenty-Two and I will flank right. Fixer, Scorch take the left, we'll all jump them on my command."

We moved to our positions and stayed low. "Fixer and I are ready," Reported Scorch.

"Okay, on three we jump in. Try to take one hostage," I said.

"Got it." Fixer replied.

"One..."

"Two..." Like it always happens when I count down, I was immediately shot. The large pain hit my shoulder, stabbing pain. I grabbed my shoulder when the pain hit my back. I was down. I looked over to see Socrch and Fixer incapacitated also.

"Twenty-Two, revive me!"

Once I was revived I went prone, and ordered Twenty-Two to revive Scorch and Fixer.

"I'll keep them busy." I assured him.

I began shooting in the direction the Mandalorian camp was in, but that wasn't where the shooting was coming from, because I was shot in the back again. My shields were down, and if I was shot again, I would be incapacitated once more. I rolled over and began shooting at the tree above me. A Mandalorian tumbled out of the tree and fell dead.

I then heard Twenty-Two, "We're all up sir."

"Go now!"

I jumped in right away and started blasting. But my gun was knocked out of my hands not too long afterwards. A Mandalorian and I began mele fighting with our Vibroblades. Back and forth we were knocking each other over. Finally, I got help from Scorch who took out his sniper rifle and shot the Mandalorian in the head. I quickly grabbed my gun and shot down another Mandalorian. I then saw the one that killed the Terenterak. He pulled out his vibrosword and began charging for me. But he stopped right in front of me, leaning over, coughing. He fell over and died. Next to him I saw a blue static of some sort change into Twenty-Two.

* * *

"How did you do that?" Scorch asked.

Twenty-Two pointed near his waist and we saw a belt. "Stealth Field Generator," He answered.

"Good job men," I said, "Twenty-Two, keep it up."

"Thank you," He replied.

"Call me Boss. It's my nickname, we'll find one for you soon."

Fixer came up with a great idea. "Sir, we could use the armor to infiltrate the base."

I accepted his plan. "Good idea Fixer. Everyone, pick a Mandalorian and exhange everything you have. I mean _everything_, even the Bacta Processing Handhelds."

"Boss, that's a little crazy getting rid of our BPHs," Scorch said.

"They will tip us off. We can't afford that, everything goes."

"Ok, I call the guy with the spike though."

I went over to the Mandalorian I killed in the tree and exchanged with him. He had green armor, vibroblade gloves, and a sniper rifle for his main weapon. The armor was equipped with a Stealth Field Generator. The sniper rifle had holo-scopes on top, which was odd. It has been known that only Commandos carry Holo-scoped rifles. I also found two scary looking Mandalorian Heavy Blaster pistols.

"Scorch, catch." I said and tossed him one of the pistols.

I found the Mandalorian's backpack and opened it up. I found extra clips, health kits, and a map. All seemed of use so I did not discard any of them.

When I was finished exhanging I went back to the campfire and took a look at my squadmates. Twenty-Two had blue armor, a light assault rifle which had a clip on top that looked like a grip.

"The clip can lock or unlock so you can use it as a grip." Twenty-Two said, noticing that I was looking at his rifle.

Scorch was wearing golden armor and carried a light assault rifle as well. He also had the pistol I gave him and the sword that nearly killed me.

"Want my sniper rifle?" I asked.

"Sure." Scorch answered and we exhanged.

Fixer was the last one I looked at and wore red armor. He carried a support rifle which looked like the light assault rifle. But instead of a grip clip he had a sort of spinning handle that carried about six clips in one. The bullets from each clip would shoot out of the gun as they spun around. And instead of taking one clip off, he could release the entire group as one clip.

* * *

"Where next?" Fixer asked.

I checked the map we had and it had a circled area that appeared to the northwest of where we were.

"Northwest. This map has a circled area there."

We began walking northwest. The sun was beginning to rise. We eventually came to an opening of forest area where a road appeared. Two large pillars were visible and a Mandalorian was at one of them.

The Mandalorian saluted Scorch at the first sight of him. Fixer and I looked at each other in confusion.

"Good to see you Zeb," The Mandalorian said, "And your squad. You find anything?"

"We ran into a Terenterak," Scorch answered. He pulled out the spike, "I have his spike."

"Nice." The gaurd responded, "Oh, Zeb, you and Zephur are to report to Mandalore for a meething in two hours. You got that."

"Yes, carry on," Scorch said.

We walked on past the gaurd not paying attention to the area we started talking,

"Ok, I'm Zeb," Said Scorch, "and Fixer is Zephur."

I joined in, "Don't forget we need to find who is sending off the huge power signals."

"Right Boss," Twenty-Two added.

"Scorch, Fixer, you two alrady have your orders. Twenty-Two and I will do what we can."

When we finished our discussion and came back to looking around us instead of just walking around. We noticed we were surrounded by a whole camp of Mandalorians.


	12. Chapter 11

Author's Note: Thanks to those faithful enough to come back and start reading campaign two. Please try to spread the word on this story. A special feature for this book (a commentary) is available to read over at Story Globe, in the Typer's Blog. If you want to know the site address, try looking it up on Google, or just PM me, OR contact me in the reviews section. I check them daily. Also, please leave some reviews. I really _need_ to know how well I am writing.

Chapter XI-Day 899-0500 Hours-Clone Wars-Dxun-Mandalorian Camp

I could not believe my eyes. I did not know if Scorch, Fixer, or Twenty-Two believed their eyes either. All I knew is that I did not believe mine. When people do not believe their eyes they think they are dreaming. I _wished_ I were dreaming.

What we saw was incredible: A whole base of Mandalorians! The entire place was a relic of the Mandalorian wars. That war has been long dead, and a race that was only known to have few left existed. It was like finding another world on just a simple planet.  
"Impossible." Said Twenty-Two  
"It's obviously not impossible." Fixer corrected  
"They're everywhere." Scorch said astonished.  
"There must be at _least _500 of them." I said. "Okay, split up."  
Twenty-Two and I left Scorch and Fixer and walked deeper into the camp.

"I don't understand." Twenty-Two said. "An entire civilization, thought to be lost, is right here, right in front of us."  
In time we came across a group of Mandalorians fighting each other on a mound of dirt.  
"A battle circle." Twenty-Two said.  
"Once we get settled in we'll have some fun there." I said.  
We continued to watch the Mandalorian battle. Eventually another onlooker noticed us and walked up to me. "Kel, Draton, good to see you guys again."  
"Good to be back." I replied.  
"Want to join the battle circle?" He suggested.  
"Not right now, maybe later."  
"Did you hear about the Republic Army on Onderon?"  
Twenty-Two joined in, "No, what are you talking about?"  
The Mandalorian continued, "The Clone Army is over Onderon as we speak. This will probably mean an upcoming battle against them."  
"Why do you think that?" I asked.  
"Onderon is a populated city, it would be a dumb idea for the two fighting armies to chose _that _as a battlefield. Dxun is known to be much more remote, filled with forests and animals. Little do they know we have an army set up here. When the two armies come to fight here, we can let ourselves be known."  
"All right, the two of us need to go." I mentioned.  
"Okay, don't forget, bonfire tonight." He called back while leaving.  
Twenty-Two asked me, "What do you think is his name?" Immediately I answered, "Kelborn."  
"How did you know that?"  
"His suit had Mandalorian writing on it."  
"You know Mandalorian?" He said surprised.  
"My teacher taught me Mandalorian, along with the rest of my squad."

The two of us came across a large building with a satellite mounted on top of it. We entered the building, the inside was pretty simple, a console, probably for communication. Other interior objects were workbenches and ammo crates. I closed the door behind us.  
"Twenty-Two." I said.  
"Yes sir?" he replied in a question-like tone.  
"Is your helmet only linked to me?" "Yes, sir."  
"Okay, from now on, just call me Boss or Three-Eight. Unless we're undercover."  
"Boss?"  
"It's my nickname, and call the stubborn guy with gold armor 'Scorch', the other guy is Fixer. That is their nicknames."  
I paused for a moment trying to think on what to say next.  
"I'm sure we will get you a nickname soon, but not yet. We each have our own nickname and," I paused in my speech, and remembered; this was a commando, he knew what a nickname was.  
"You already know about nicknames, never mind. Come on."  
I began to walk towards the door when he replied, "No I don't."  
I immediately stopped, and slowly turned. "What was that?"  
"I'm a Clone Commando _Reserve_." He replied. I stared back at him puzzled. So he tried to explain, "Look each of you has a strong ability, right? What is Scorch's?"  
"Demolitions." I said confused.  
"Fixer?"  
"Slicing and hacking."  
"And you?"  
"Leadership, what does this have to do with anything?"  
"These abilities came naturally, and you had no choice. But a Clone Commando Reserve will have normal commando abilities, and choose a talent. Then we have to train for that ability"  
Thing began to make sense. "So what is you ability?"  
"Historical records, and stealth."  
I tilted my head to let him know I didn't understand.  
"In Galactic Basic, my mind is like an encyclopedia, and a dictionary, mixed together with the Jedi Archives."  
"That's good to know, we can use a man like you."  
"Boss." He said.  
"Yes?"  
"I think this is where the Republic intercepted the large power reading."  
_Good thinking_. "Unless there is a bigger one," I replied.  
"Sir?"  
"This may not be the only camp here on Dxun. That Mandalorian said they have an _army_."  
"If that _is _true, I think this is the main one. If Mandalore were here, this would be the main base, meaning the greatest amount of power."  
"Makes sense, now follow me."

I took Twenty-Two over to a supply shed with some tools inside. Repeatedly Twenty-Two nagged me asking where we were going, and what we were doing. I just remained silent, and eventually Twenty-Two got the picture. I grabbed some tools and went into the communications base. I closed the door behind me until there was a little crack left so I could peak out the door."Here," I said giving him the tools, "open up that console and hack into it. We need to get into contact with the Advisor."  
"Okay." He replied without question and immediately went to work. Twenty-Two knelt down to a panel at the bottom of the console, unscrewed it and lied down underneath the console.  
Minutes passed without anyone coming in and Twenty-Two was still working on the computer. Every second was frustrating, fearing someone would come in.  
Suddenly I saw a bronze colored Mandalorian walking up the ramp to the room. "Blast, someone's coming." I whispered. "Get all the way in the console, take the screws with you. I'll close it." Twenty-Two slid himself all the way underneath the terminal behind the panels. I closed up the panel he opened, hoping it would stay. I kept my leg near it and leaned over the console, pushing random buttons. It did not really matter, the console was off.  
"Kel, what are you doing here," A voice from behind me asked. I turned around, and saw the bronze armored Mandalorian standing in the doorway.  
I stared at him for a moment, thinking of an answer. "Oh, just trying to get this comm. unit running. It's been malfunctioning lately."  
"Well, its off you laigrack. Use your head son." The Mandalorian replied, while pushing me aside, going to turn the console on himself. He started pushing the button to turn it on, but Twenty-Two had cut the power earlier.  
"Hmm." The Sergeant pondered. He began pounding the mechanism, and the panel next to his leg fell out. _Blast!_  
"What are you doing down there Draton?" The Sergeant yelled.  
I suddenly had a great solution to all of this. "That's what I've been trying to tell you Sergeant," I explained to both Draton (not knowing what to say) and the Sergeant, "Someone complained that the communications center was not working. After a brief inspection, it was discovered that the problem was with the terminal. So Sergeant Zeb sent Draton and I to head on over here to fix the problem." I stopped and leaned over to Twenty-Two, "And no, that new cool fan didn't solve anything. I _told_ you to take a look at the PSU."  
Draton nodded, "Sorry." The Sergeant looked between the two of us for a moment. Draton had continued his "work", and I was looking back at the Sergeant. He slowly nodded his head. "Very well. Let me know when you get that terminal fixed."  
I saluted him, said "yes sir", and he left. I nearly closed the door, leaving a crack to see. I then plopped my helmet off and swiped the sweat from my brow. "Thank the Mandalorians for helmets. Its far easier to lie through tinted, black helmets than face to face." I smiled and got back into position.

Finally, Twenty-Two called out, "Got it."  
I walked over to the console and took my helmet off. "Guard the door."  
Twenty-Two jumped out from underneath the console, grabbed his rifle and walked up to the door.  
"I left it open a bit." I mentioned and pressed the talk button.  
"Advisor, this is Delta Three-Eight come in."  
"Delta Three-Eight? Good to hear you, we lost contact for some time."  
"We infiltrated a Mandalorian base, and found dozens of Mandalorians. I don't think you should come in yet, this may not be the only base on the planet, we will need some more time."  
"Mandalorians, on Dxun? What are they doing here?"  
"I don't know, one said that they have an army here."  
"Okay, we can give you more time. We will continue to be in orbit around Onderon. Advisor out."  
The screen went static, and Twenty-Two spoke, "I modified my helmet so we can tap into the comm. system and talk openly to Scorch, Fixer, or the Advisor when we want. We will just be using the signal of this satellite."  
"Good thinking," I replied, "Try to fix this console as best as you can."  
Twenty-Two went over to the console and knelt down, "And Twenty-Two," he looked up, I tossed my helmet over to him, "rig my helmet once you are done with that."  
He smiled and continued working.


	13. Chapter 12

Chapter XII-Day 899-Clone Wars-0630 Hours-Dxun-Mandalorian Camp

After my helmet was modified, the console was fixed, and the tools were in the shed, we left for more exploring of the main base. If those Mandalorians did not have an army of men, they at least had an army's worth of firepower. They had loads of guns, two hanger bays, each one including 2 basilisk droids, they definitely had at _least _500 men, because we eventually found our barracks, and there were at lot of barracks. These guys were training every day, they had guns, they had armor, they had ships, they had ranks, and they had everything.  
Twenty-Two and I decided to drop by Mandalore's place, see who was leading this army. We came across a silver colored Mandalorian with many decorations. He immediately spoke to us, "Ah, Kel, Draton, good to see you two. Where's Zeb?"  
I answered first, "He dismissed us since he and Zephur have a meeting soon."  
Mandalore nodded while saying, "Yes, meeting. Hey about that meeting, would you guys like to do a mission for me?"  
Twenty-Two drew back at that, "I'm not sure."  
"It's safe enough for two Mandalorians such as yourselves, it's just a little recon work."  
Twenty-Two and I nodded in agreement.  
"Good, now follow me." Mandalore lead us into his room, which was a place I had not yet seen anyone go into. He closed the door behind him.  
"Now what I'm about to tell you is coming up in the meeting today. This means that you cannot tell anyone."  
"Okay." I said.  
"There is word the clone army has come to Onderon, I think they are landing troops on Dxun to wipe us out for good."  
"Why would they want to do that, sir?" Twenty-Two questioned.  
"I'm not sure," he replied walking to his desk in the far corner of his room, "All I know about clones is that they bring war behind them." He sounded worried.  
"You mean the Separatists?" I suggested.  
"Yes," he turned around to look at us, "A cruiser _is _orbiting over Onderon. The separatists could possibly land here to hide. If the clones find the Separatists here, we will be lost in a battle most likely."  
"So what do you want us to do?" I asked.  
His speech became a bit more commanding now, "I have a shuttle that is used for transportation between Dxun and Onderon, and I get a good amount of our premium supplies there. I would like you two to take the shuttle to Onderon, and see if you can figure out what the clones are doing here. I will expect you two back by nightfall. You will be traveling as bounty hunters. We don't have different clothes for you so go in your armor. Be careful though, the people of Onderon are known for not liking our kind."

We were in a hanger bay with the shuttle Mandalore uses waiting for when we were supposed to leave. Mandalore said he was going to meet us there. Leaving Fixer and Scorch behind was not my favorite plan. If they were captured we would not be able to help them until we got back. The good part of the plan was we would be able to get into contact with the Advisor without worrying about our helmet signals. If someone tried to talk to us, and got through, while we were talking to the Advisor, our cover would be blown. "Ever been to Onderon?" I asked Twenty-Two.  
Twenty-Two was anxiously pacing the hanger bay. "No, the clone war has never touched Onderon, until now."  
I was leaning on the small shuttle when Mandalore walked in. I immediately stood up straight.  
"Sorry I took so long but something came up. If the two of you cannot look like bounty hunters by your clothing, at least you can have bounty hunter weapons. Our Mandalorian weapons are made from a real company so we had to make something more _homemade_. And I don't want to alarm people of what company we use, so you should leave your standard weapons here, not that they should notice. You can keep these weapons as a token for doing the mission."  
Twenty-Two had received dual heavy Mandalorian blaster pistols from years ago. Mandalore handed me something quite familiar, a DC-15, also known as the standard issue clone blaster rifle.  
"How did you get one of these?" I asked Mandalore firmly.  
He sighed. "I'm beginning to grow worried about the army hovering over Onderon. One of our scouts met two clone soldiers just a minute ago. They were pretty weak, and were shot on sight. If this is the finest the clone army has to offer, then the battle may be easy. But I have heard of heavier clones than the normal ones, ARC troopers are one kind. Another type has an unknown name to me, but is very deadly. They sabotage the enemy without them ever fully knowing what happened. They are hardly ever noticed when they strike. Well, no matter, I should not trouble you with the problems that cloud my head. Good luck men."  
I could not stop staring at the black blaster so Twenty-Two nudged me. We received our extra clips, and left.


	14. Chapter 13

Chapter XIII-Day 899-Clone Wars-0700 Hours-Onderon

The shuttle ride from Dxun to Onderon took only ten minutes. We were pretty lucky too; we got out of the shuttle and were immediately met by a clone."Sir, I am a clone with the Republic, I need you to come with me." He said.  
I figured any Mandalorian that landed on Onderon was going to receive this so I popped my helmet off. When the clone saw his reflection he asked. "What number?"  
I responded. "RC- 01/138, Delta Squad," He saluted. "And this is RRC-93/122, Delta Squad." The clone once again saluted. "If you would be so kind, could you please lead me to the Advisor?"  
He nodded and said. "Follow me sirs."  
We began following him and he halted just before we left the small hanger bay. "I suggest you put those helmets back on. It would be easier if this looks like you are being detained. We do not want any suspicion."  
Twenty-Two and I both returned our helmets to our heads and continued out into the courtyard. It turned out we were in a small port station with two other hanger bays. We stopped next to two large turbo laser cannons towering the area. Our escort mentioned to a clone guard. "These two are with me."  
The guard nodded in response and we walked in between the two large cannons, down an alley and went deep into the city. After a walk we ended up in front of a large cannon again. This cannon had a door on it that opened up to a large hallway inside. We went down several meters passing many doors along the way. We came to a door on the left side of the hallway. The clone went to open it and said. "You can take those helmets off now. We've declared a small "martial law" on the planet so we have control of the security systems."  
The two of us took off our helmets and tucked them under our arms. The trooper pushed a few buttons next to the door and the skinny human side door opened. We walked in and the door closed behind us.  
The room was simple. It had a table of five chairs to the left, and at the far right corner was a communications terminal. The Advisor was speaking to a clone while standing next to the terminal. "Yes," said the clone. "I'll make sure it is taken care of."  
He turned off the console and turned to us. "Delta Three-Eight, Twenty-Two? What are you two doing here?"  
I smiled and replied. "Mandalore gave us a chance to come up here, we took it."  
"So why did he have you come up here?"  
"He knows that the clones are here, and he believes separatists are coming soon. He figures you'll take the battlefield to Dxun instead of fighting here."  
"So he sent you to find out what we are doing here?"  
"Right. He fears if there is a battle on Dxun, the Mandalorians will be wiped out at the same time."  
"What else have you learned?"  
"So far, there are no other Mandolorian bases. There is a meeting that began at 0700 hours about the clone army being here. They also met a clone scouting the planet and disposed of him quickly. They are as strong as commandos, and some of them could be even stronger."  
The Advisor nodded. "That is a decent amount of information for the moment. How are you doing with your new squad member?"  
"We're doing fine, we're getting along pretty good."  
Twenty-Two tapped me on the shoulder. "Sir, could I speak to you in private?"  
I put my helmet on and switched the comm. with Twenty-Two only. The two of us moved towards the door so we were a bit to ourselves. "Why'd you lie to him? We're not going smooth!"  
I figured this would come up. "Play along and I'll tell you later, but right now is not the time."  
As I started moving back to the room Twenty-Two answered, "All right, but I don't approve of this."  
I took my helmet off once more and the Advisor began speaking, "How long do you have up here?"  
"Till nightfall." As I replied the door behind us opened and a clone walked in.  
"Sorry for the interruption Advisor." He said, "But command is on your console right now."  
"Thank you." The Advisor said.  
"Come over here," he said to us and walked over to his console. He pressed a button and the screen flickered. When the screen turned on it revealed several commanding officers along with General Jedi Master Plo Koon.  
"Advisor how goes the mission?" Asked one of the commanders.  
"Well, why don't you ask the man leading the mission," and he motioned towards me. I walked up to the screen and saluted.  
"Proceed." Said Master Koon.  
I took a somewhat deep breath in. "So far we have found a Mandalorian camp and its leader: Mandalore. There is at _least_ 10,000 troops on the planet." I paused and another commander started talking. "10,000 is a small number, we could easily destroy them with a large artillery strike."  
I contested, "With all due respect sir, I think otherwise." The commander tilted his head slightly, "Mandalorians are very fierce and are as strong as any Republic Commando. Some may be even stronger; they have thick armor and shelter. They've been building this place for years, they've thought ahead and built bomb shelters You won't hit them, they have a communications satellite that also detects missile movement."  
"I see." He replied and went silent.  
A clone appeared on the screen, walked up to Master Koon, and whispered something in his ear.  
Plo Koon's hollow and mechanical voice began to talk. "Gentlemen, there is a single Separatist Cruiser coming to Onderon."  
"How far away?" I asked.  
"They will arrive in three days, including today."  
"What do you suggest my boys and I should do?"  
"We'll come up with an answer as soon as we can."  
"Try to come up with one by night."  
"We will try."  
The console screen flickered black and I turned back to the Advisor. "What should I do now?"  
He replied in a somewhat cheery voice. "Well, night comes around 1700 hours so you have nearly twenlve hours ahead of you. The two of you can do as you wish until I call you, and keep you comlinks open. Have some fun."  
"Very well."  
Ah, very rarely were clones allowed to have a night to themselves or "A run ashore" as Omega Squad called it. A night where a clone can actually have less of a purpose and feel a small part of what it is to be free. It is a time to eat something other than ration cubes, a time to forget, a time to rest.  
The only thing that bugged me was the fact that Fixer and Scorch were over on Dxun while we had the fun.


	15. Chapter 14

Chapter XIV-Day 899-Clone Wars-0715 Hours-Onderon

_The meeting has been going on for at least fifteen minutes._ I thought to myself.

Twenty-Two and I were in a small cantina eating a true meal when Twenty-Two asked me, "So are you going to tell me?"

I had already forgotten. "What?"  
"Why you _lied_ to the Advisor."

"Oh, right." I paused for a moment, preparing to tell my deepest feelings to someone else for the first time ever. I was also thinking of a way for Twenty-Two to understand this. I eventually came up with a way to do it.

"Have you ever worked in other squads besides this one?" I asked him.

"Three." He replied in a simple answer.

"Did they compose of members from the same squad?"

"What?" He asked in confusion.

"Were they squads that just lost one man or were they three clones that never met each other?"

"The first one lost only a single man and they were pleasant enough, I had to leave them soon enough just because they got a different replacement. The second squad was a made up squad, no one got along and the three of them died, I was the only survivor."

"And the third…"

"The third was like the first but they disliked me."

"Is that supposed to be us?"

"No."

"Okay, the third squad, they had a grudge against you?"

"I was the direct opposite of the squad mate they had lost so I'm sure you know how they felt."

"Did they ever happen to lie about the problems they were having with you?"

"No."

"What happened to the third squad?" I already knew the answer.

"They were separated, and all sent to different squads."

I was right.

"That's it."

"What?"

"They were separated."  
"You fear this squad being taken apart?"

"Yes. Look, I've dealt with something around one hundred and fifty missions in the past two years and one hundred sixty-three days. When you are in a squad for so long, you tend to get used to things a bit. When you bond for so long, and fight so often, and so many times _without_ losing the man beside you, you don't expect anything different to happen for the rest of the war besides different missions. When I lost Sev, I had to move back to the frontlines of Kashyyyk, I had to somehow lead my two remaining men _back_ into battle. It was a big change, a whole mission without Sev. Scorch is Sev's "Pod Brother" I believe you are familiar with the term." He nodded. "And at Kashyyyk I had to worry about surviving the battle, accomplishing the battle, keeping Scorch under control and yet at the same time help him. The day of that battle, I realized something: I have a purpose in this war. Every day now, ever since I lost Sev has been like the day of that battle. I wake up each morning knowing that I must make it through this day without losing another squad mate. Every day I realize my actual purpose, not to defend the Republic but to make sure my squad lives. I'm not sure if I will ever see Sev again. I have to make sure that Fixer and Scorch will see beyond the end of this war, Sev may not. If my squad was to be separated like your third squad, I'm not sure they would make it. They may not make it because they can't adjust to the new leaders or the way they lead. They may not make it, because they are in positions where they are not accepted. Adjustment is hard, and Scorch is having a hard time doing it. I had to adjust immediately because I lead the squad so if I didn't adjust at Kashyyyk we would not have survived. The same applies here, I have to adjust and so does the squad. If we don't, we won't survive, or worse, separated. And if they are separated, and they end up in that position you were in with that third squad, they may not adjust…they may not survive. So I _have_ to keep them in my squad, I have to do this."

There was no response.

The two of us ate our meals, drank our water, paid what we needed, and left. On our way out Twenty-Two finally spoke. "I'll play along from now on."

"I don't mind if you do or don't, for the moment I just want you to consider what is going through my head. And as long as you don't get my squad separated."

"And what's going through Scorch's head?"  
"Yes. Do not judge him on the way he treats you, not yet. Wait until he adjusts, then you can judge him."

Onderon was truly at heart a very beautiful city, maybe not as beautiful as Couruscant, or Kamino, but it is around that area. Buildings were not as high there as Couruscant. The homes, cantinas, ports, and security buildings mostly took on the shape of small, flat, square or rectangular shapes. Each one was covered with the white shiny, and reflective panels, which obviously were square shaped. Some of the panels were too scratched, lost color and turned gray.

Twenty-Two and I spent time wandering around the city, trying to keep track of where we were at the same time.

It was now 0745 hours, Twenty-Two and I were in the center of the city, or so we thought. The spot had the feel of a center area to a city. The street was emptied out, leaving nothing but space in a near rounded spot. It gave a feel of being in the center of the city. The area we were in was not too far from the security base that we met the Advisor in earlier. There were three tall, towering statues next to each other in the center of the empty space. The one on the left was an old man around sixty years old, but instead of looking like a dying man, he seemed strong. He seemed very strong. To the right was a noble looking woman around the age of 25-30. She looked very noble and seemed like one who had the ability to lead. And in the center was a man. The man was cloaked in a robe with many layers. His hair was very close to shaven, with a barely visible scar that ran down the right eye. By the look of his eyes and his shoulders he seemed to carry a heavy burden. A burden that has left so many scars, yet he carried on. In his right hand was a lightsaber. A few visitors with cameras circled the three statues. Twenty-Two and I walked up to look at the names on the statue bases.

The one on the right had the inscription, "Queen Talia,." The left statue had the words written, "General Vaklu." And the middle statue said, "The Exile."

"Twenty-Two, what do you know about these three?" I asked curious.

"Besides the names," he took a deep breath, "Queen Talia ruled Onderon for many years and about fiver years after the Sith war, or also known as the Jedi Civil War, that General wanted to take the throne. So, he started a revolution of the government, and he had a large amount of the military to back him up along with citizens that viewed him as a war hero. But the Queen also had military that was loyal to her, along with a Jedi Master who had been hiding in her temple for many years."

I paused Twenty-Two and asked, "Was _he _the Master," pointing to the Jedi statue.

Twenty-Two shook his head and continued, "So that General wanted something that would make him difficult to defeat, something that would assure him victory…"

I broke in. "That Jedi?"

He shook his head. "No, the Sith. They had a base on Dxun, an ancient temple. Now I don't know much about that Jedi, but I do know that he was unstoppable, and blew away the Sith that were about to kill the Queen, along with that General and everyone that fought for him."

"What happened to him?"

"He disappeared, there have been rumors about him for many years. Most of them came from the people on Onderon. But no one is sure what his history is."

"Name some of the rumors for me."

"Okay. Some say he served the Sith, but then quit. Others say he was a Mandalorian. Some even believe he wasn't a force user."

"What do you think?"  
"I don't have enough information to think much about him. He was probably a Jedi, but Jedi don't unleash power that defeats entire armies. What I can tell by the look of him was that he did something that changed both himself and the rest of the world."

"He carries a burden, one that I cannot decipher through just this sculpture."

"He's a leader."

"How do you know that?" Twenty-Two asked, while puzzled.

"I've seen that burden. I wear it."

"If we had a Jedi like that in our army right now, the war would've been over at Geonosis."

"Really?"  
"Yeah, so what now?" Twenty-Two asked, turning to me.  
"Well it is now 0815 hours, we have a bit under nine hours till we are expected back. One more question, who is the current leader of Onderon?"  
"The Republic has assigned a Rodian by the name of Tundesh to watch over Onderon. There is no real King or Queen though, not for a long time."

"Let's head back to the Advisor, see what we will be telling Mandalore when we return to Dxun."


	16. Chapter 15

Note from TheTyper: Thanks to all of you who have taken the time to read these chapters and to comment on the chapters. But if possible please tell me what I am doing wrong in these chapters if you can find anything so I can fix it. And also mention what I am doing correct so I know what not to change. If you cannot find anything, the usual pleasant comments are still enjoyable. Thank you.

Chapter XV-Day 899-Clone Wars-0830 Hours-Onderon

Twenty-Two and I went back to the security base where we had met the Advisor earlier. "Ah, Three-Eight," greeted the Advisor, "what brings you here again?"

We popped our helmets off. "I was just wondering what Twenty-Two and I should tell Mandalore when we return," I replied.

"I am working on that with General Plo Koon as of this moment." The Advisor motioned towards the console. "He will be arriving on Dxun to help out against the Separatist forces when they arrive."

Twenty-Two and I saluted the general. "What have you planned so far?" I asked the Advisor.

"For the moment, we plan on Plo Koon's forces to arrive just hours before the Separatists show up. Whatever happens we need to make sure that these Mandalorians are destroyed in this conflict."

"Why?" I asked.

"We do not need a third force in this war. Our two forces are already doing enough damage."

"That doesn't mean we have to wipe out our own race."

The Advisor paused. "They are different Three-Eight. We serve the Republic. We fight for the Republic. They take neither side in this war."

"Then what about the clone trainers? Kal Skirata, Walon Vau, and even Talon Makr were all Mandalorians."

"They are loyal to the republic also."

"No they're not. They are the direct opposite."

"They love the Republic. They helped create clones like you."

I couldn't take his lies anymore and slammed my hand into the desk. "They HATE the Republic! The find the idea of making Mandalorian clones only for fighting a _sick_ and _disgusting_ thing! Creating _millions_ upon _millions_ of Mandalorians and using them as tools, without letting them having a chance to become what real Mandalorians are? They _loathe _that. It gives the Mandalorians a definition that has always been the wrong one: savage, ruthless killing machines."

The Advisor, Plo Koon, Twenty-Two, and I had all fallen silent. I could not believe what The Advisor had said, though I should have figured he thought such. Finally The Advisor spoke, "I think it is time for you to go Three-Eight."  
I nodded and walked towards the door. I went to put my helmet on as I passed Twenty-Two. He had a confused look on his face. "Let's go," I told him.

But The Advisor called out, "Twenty-Two, would you stay behind for a moment and talk with me? I have a few questions I would like to ask you."

Twenty-Two had turned to me for an answer. I just put my helmet on and left.

I went down the hallway, walked out the door, and leaned up against the wall right next to the door.

About five minutes later Twenty-Two stepped out of the building. He looked at me, and waited for me to start walking. It was a few minutes before Twenty-Two said to me, "You're not going to ask me about anything?"

"No."

"Nothing? Aren't you at all interested in what he told me?"

I stopped in my steps for a brief second. "Would you tell me?"

He thought for a second. "I don't know."

"When you do know, I won't have to ask, and you won't have to think about it."

I kept walking, and it was quiet for another minute or two.

"You remind me of Kal Skirata."

"How is that?" I asked him.

"What you said back there is exactly what Skirata would've said."

"I guess so," I said realizing the fact.

"Have you ever met him?" Twenty-Two asked me.

"Yes, I have. Omega Squad, Kal Skirata, and Delta Squad went through a Black Ops mission on Couruscant before."

"Was he your teacher?"

"No."

"Who was?"

"Walon Vau." Immediately Twenty-Two froze in his steps and stared at me blankly.

"Walon Vau?" He asked making sure he heard me right.

"Yes, Walon Vau. He was also with us on Couruscant."

Twenty-Two had plenty of reason to be afraid or shocked. Everyone had heard stories about Walon Vau, and the clones he trained. He was known to fight them, or make them fight each other. He did the right thing in the idea that he taught the Mandalorian way to clones, but took the wrong approach: violence. Another problem with Walon Vau was that when his clones failed in a task, he beat them. When Atin of Prudii Squad was challenged to fight either a clone brother or Walon, Atin decided to fight Walon instead of harm a brother. Walon nearly killed Atin.

Later when Atin lost his old squad on Geonosis, Walon beat Atin once more. This time a scar was left from his right eye down to the left side of his chin. Atin swore to one-day kill Walon Vau. From there on Sev took a particular hostility to Atin, and so did the rest of the squad. Vau was a good teacher of the Mandalorian ways. The only men he had ever lost were Prudii Squad, and now Sev. Even though Walon hurt us, and made us fight each other, sometimes becoming humiliated, we loved him. His teachings taught us survival and had allowed us to live through many dangers.

We wasted hours around the city and eventually decided we needed to return to Dxun. We went to the Advisor again and got our answer to what Mandalore would be asking. The Advisor hardly spoke at all to me, and was very solemn about it all. As we left I saw a piece of paper on the table labeled, "Delta Squad Conduct Report."


	17. Chapter 16

Note from TheTyper: Thanks to all of you who have taken the time to read these chapters and to comment on the chapters. But if possible please tell me what I am doing wrong in these chapters if you can find anything so I can fix it. And also mention what I am doing correct so I know what not to change. If you cannot find anything, the usual pleasant comments are still enjoyable. Thank you.

Chapter XVI-Day 899-1700 Hours-Clone Wars-Dxun-Mandalorian Camp

Night had fallen under Dxun. Locating a camp in a deep forest such as Dxun would be quite hard to see at night. But it was not hard to see that night, for a large was taking place.

Twenty-Two and I landed down and made our way to the center of the camp. We immediately reported to Mandalore.

"Ah, you have returned. And I believe you have not come empty handed."

I told him what the Advisor told me, "We have gathered information that the clone army is only inspecting the planet, making sure the government stays under control."

Mandalore chuckled and said, "That's a big waste. Onderon's control in politics is like the lust for revenge. You can't wait, you become impatient, and you will be destroyed if you do not plan ahead of time."

Twenty-Two scratched his helmet, puzzled, and asked, "Sir, what do you mean?"

"What I mean Draton, is that Onderon is a planet that is never of peace in politics and government. Thousands of years ago, when Queen Talia ruled, so many people that were against the Queen did not plan the correct time to act, and to fight. They just randomly rebelled because they could not take living under her anymore. And Onderon is like that to this day. The lust for revenge is similar. Many who seek revenge do not plan it out, as they should. They randomly attack and without plan, they become defeated quickly."

"Thank you sir. I believe I will take that into lesson," Said Twenty-Two saluting.

"Good for you. Now, go and join your squad, they are waiting for you."

I nodded and motioned for Twenty-Two to follow me.

As the party continued, Scorch, Fixer, Twenty-Two, and I eventually found each other in the large crowd. We switched comlinks over to each other.

"Okay, what did you two find out at the meeting?" I asked.

"Nothing too special." Fixer answered.

Scorch responded almost immediately. "Except for the fact that A: There are no other Mandalorians out here on Dxun, this is the only base. B: A big gunship is hovering over Onderon but you guys already know that. And C: I'm a Sergeant! And Fixer is a Corporal! Now salute me Lance Corporals."

I was surprised. "Sergeants? Corporals? If these guys have rankings they are definitely organized. They might actually start another war. If they had enough men they can be an army."

Fixer slowly laughed. "Oh, they don't stop at rankings sir. These guys have forged thousands of their own weapons; color-coded different armor for rankings. The weapons all seem like military issue creations. They have at least a dozen Basilisk War Droids. This already _is_ an army."

"A small one." Scorch corrected.

"So what about you guys?" Fixer asked.

"We were the two sent up to investigate Onderon."

"Lucky," Scorch complained.

"We found out a few things. First off, we have trouble on the way from our friends the seps. They will be here in two days."

I could hear Scorch mutter _fierfek_ under his breath.

"The Advisor hopes that the Mandalorians will be wiped out in the conflict in between the two armies. We have another day of integrating ourselves into these people. Twenty-Two and I have our helmets set so we can contact the Advisor. See that you two get that done."

"Got it."

"Now gentlemen," I said, "Go have fun tonight."

Scorch shouted out, "Hey! I give the orders here!" He then mocked me, "Now gentlemen, go have fun tonight."

"Wise guy," Fixer replied.

"Scorch, you go with Twenty-Two and play nice all right?" I asked of Scorch.

Scorch sighed hesitantly, "All right."

Fixer and I watched the bonfire and waited for Mandalore's speech. I began to notice something related to what Twenty-Two told me earlier. I saw the commotion, the culture. I could see true Mandalorians acting like real Mandalorians. They sang, they ate, they slapped each others chests and backs. They even did the Da Wherda, a traditional dance very special to Mandalorian warriors. It did not seem right, being raised and taught the Mandalorian ways under a true Mandalorian, to kill them. And yet, there I was with Fixer, Scorch, and Twenty-Two hiding in their base, planning to destroy them. I could tell from my primal emotions that I did not approve of what I was doing, but like a machine did it anyways. I didn't like that. It made me angry, because it was one of the things Walon hated. He always wanted us to be free and true Mandalorians, he wanted us not to be controlled like machines. And he had told us multiple times not to let ourselves become controlled by others. I was lost at that time, not sure what I should do knowing what the penalty for my squad was if I was not to cooperate.

"So how has Scorch been behaving?" I asked Fixer.

"He's not having fun around Twenty-Two, that's for sure," Fixer answered.

"Has he been offensive to you lately?"

"No. He's mad, but he seems to be controlling it well."

"He doesn't completely trust you for the moment you know. Show Twenty-Two _and_ Scorch some compassion. They need it."

"I know. Whatever I say kind of ends up being offensive to him at times."

"Just think positive, you'll get through to him."

Mandalore began his speech. I was wondering how great a leader he was. From my earlier conversations with him I could tell that he was not a mindless killer. He made his appearance on a large boulder near the center of the bonfire.

"My fellow brothers!" He boldly spoke. "Today, we have found the arrival of some new _friends._ The Grand Army of the Republic, who are pathetic, and stupid cloned creations of Jango Fett, arrived this morning. For two years these clones have gone to many planets, to challenge their enemies, the Separatists. Planets and civilizations have been laid waste because of the battles sparked by these two armies. If we do not prepare ourselves for the war, if we are not ready, then we will be destroyed forever. Never again will we appear in the galaxy as a form of a threat.

"We have gathered, we have built, we have trained, and we have prepared ourselves for this upcoming battle. We have weapons, assault rifles, swords, sniper rifles, vibroblades and many other weapons.

"Knowledge of whether the Separatist are coming or not is unknown. But I know in my heart that whatever happens they will come to _our_ field or we will go to them. We have lived on this planet undiscovered for ten years preparing to fight. The enemy comes to our planet unaware of the forest surrounding them. We will hunt them down, and then our journey to becoming galaxy wide threats will begin. After our battle with the clone army and maybe the separatists, we will consume Onderon and give them the torture of being hated and slaughtered like cattle. And once Onderon is destroyed, every living soul will know of the Mandalorian race."

A large streak of red crawled its way from Mandalore's hand. He was holding a lightsaber. He then threw some dust into the fire and the flames formed the Mandalorian skull symbol. He raised the lightsaber high into the air as the Mandalorians around us began shouting, "Mandalore! Mandalore! Mandalore! Mandalore!"


	18. Chapter 17

Chapter XVII-Day 900-Clone Wars-0600 Hours-Dxun-Mandalorian Camp

I woke up early to train with the Mandalorians that day. Twenty-Two and Fixer also got up well. Scorch on the other hand was a little out of it.

"Captain, you need to get up." Twenty-Two said nudging him.

"Captain, wake up." He still did not respond. "Looks like he had too much of that ale last night."

Fixer decided to help. "Try this."

Fixer got up to Scorch's ear and whispered, "Scavengers."

Immediately Scorch started screaming his head off running around the room while crying, "Get it off! Get it off!"

He finally came to his senses and stood there embarrassed. "That's not funny Fi…" I nudged him reminding him that we could be heard even though we were in our own dorm behind doors.

"Zephur! That wasn't funny. I could have you stabbed for that."

We laughed for a moment and then Twenty-Two asked, "What was that all about?"  
"I'll tell you later." I told him chuckling.

We geared up and sat on our beds. I began briefing the three of them on what our goal for the day was. "The Separatists are coming tomorrow. By that time we need to have established a high trust level in this camp. We should already be trusted enough because we are disguised as the enemy. But make yourselves known today as a fellow Mandalorian. Gain prestige and gain trust. Give them reason not to think about us as an enemy. Dismissed."

When we left the barracks we found an area for weapons practice. I decided we could all get used to the Mandalorian weapons, which would give us an advantage when we were to fight them. After practicing with our weapons for some time we found quite a bit of commotion encircling a sparring area.

I turned to Twenty-Two. "We can gain some trust here."

A green armored Mandalorian saw the two of us, "Hey, Kel, Draton, want to join us?"

The two of us nodded and went to the mound of dirt. The rules of a battle circle were simple: The challenging opponent decides what can or cannot be used. And whoever steps out of the circle, is knocked down, goes against the laid out rules by the challenger, or is hurt enough to not continue on, will lose.

Twenty-Two went first against a skilled knife fighter by the name of Elgon. The fight began and Twenty-Two fought well, but he lost in the end.

I went next against the same guy. I was the challenger so I decided gauntlet vibroblades only.

The fight began, and Elgon immediately charged at me with striking pride. I quickly ejected a vibroblade and blocked one arm while grabbing the other. We were in a lock. I swept down and tripped his legs. I won.

The green Mandalorian spoke, "Nice round Kel. You now have a challenger: Draton!"

_This will be interesting. I can at least find out how good he fights._

Twenty-Two and I took our positions in the battle circle. The green Mandalorian spoke again. "Draton, you are the challenger. You will decide what terms will go in the fight."  
Twenty-Two looked at me and then said, "Gauntlet Vibroblades and grenades only."

I began to smile behind my helmet. I ejected my vibroblades by making a fist and scooped up an adhesive grenade off my belt. I prepared myself and got into a good position to throw the detonator.

Twenty-Two readied himself as well. He ejected his vibroblades and grabbed a grenade.

"Begin."  
I immediately rolled my adhesive grenade in front of Twenty-Two. Twenty-Two tossed his grenade into the air. Just as he threw his grenade I could easily see what it was: a sonic detonator.

_Uh oh. This is gonna hurt._

The sonic detonator pushed me back pretty hard; I was lucky I was still standing. The adhesive stuck Twenty-Two good though. It had formed a blue glowing paste on the ground, practically gluing Twenty-Two's feet to the ground. I would have lost the match if it did not work. I ran right for my enemy and made a terrible mistake, I jumped at him. He took the opportunity and heaved a flash bang right towards my face. Barely a second later I could feel a heavy thud on my left shoulder. Twenty-Two had punched me as I landed next to him. I began swinging my arms wildly in different directions hoping to hit him back. It did not help me much. I only got hit more. Sight was finally fading in and I could barely see a fist coming for my face. I swung my right arm around it and pulled it down. I then jabbed my vibroblade on the underside of Twenty-Two's shoulder armor. I flipped it off and cut the top of his shoulder. Twenty-Two immediately responded and cut the soft patch on the joint area of my elbow.

The Mandalorians roared and cheered at our fight.

Finally the adhesive died off. Twenty-Two was no longer immobile. The cuts stopped and the blocking started. Back and forth we went blocking each other's attacks repeatedly. The clangs continued for quite some time.

The crowd of Mandalorians grew and several began betting on the match.

Every once in a while one of us would cut each other. I grew tired of it and ducked under one of Twenty-Two's large swings and charged right into him. He fell over and the fight ended.

The Madnalorians began applauding the glorious fight. Mandalore, who happened to be watching nearby, walked up to Twenty-Two and I.

"Good match," He said congratulating the two of us.

"Thank you sir," Twenty-Two and I both said at once.

_Oops._ Acting as one is a heavy clone commando habit, if Mandalore noticed and knew that, we would be in trouble.

Mandalore continued speaking, "Wait here you two. I am about to give an announcement."

Mandalore turned to the large crowd of Mandalorians and shouted. "Fellow Mandalorians, before you start your next fight, I would like you all to be a witness of the promotion of Kel and Draton."

The Mandalorians surrounding the battle circle cheered for a bit and stopped.

Mandalore walked up to Twenty-Two. "Draton, for special services, obedience, and actions beyond the call of duty, I promote you to Private First Class."

Mandalore shook Twenty-Two's hand and saluted him. The crowd applauded as Mandalore walked up to me. "And Kel, for special services, obedience, and actions beyond the call of duty, I promote you to Corporal."

Mandalore shook my hand and saluted me. The crowd once again applauded.

Twenty-Two and I fought in a few more rounds and then left the battle circle. As we left, Mandalorians would pass us and congratulate us. Others would salute us.

"Think we got enough prestige there?" Twenty-Two asked.

We eventually found Scorch and Fixer who were at the other side of camp. Fixer was talking to a technician while Scorch talked to the supply officer the camp.

"Why don't you hang out with Fixer for a while." I suggested to Twenty-Two.

Twenty-Two nodded and joined Fixer. I walked over to Scorch who was asking at the moment, "You have any heavy weapons? Like anti-armor or something like that?" The supply office was a wall to Mandalore's building with shelves where weaponry would normally be. An awning that extended off of the building covered the area. The shelves were quite bare except for a few random weapons, and clips.

The supply officer, Kudron, replied to Scorch, "Sorry Captain, the heaviest thing I have right now in gun terms is this one here." Kudron walked over to the wall and pulled a gun off the shelf that looked similar to a Trandoshan machine gun, But instead it had a top rail near the front of the gun allowing the person to hold the top with one hand, while holding the handle with the other hand. Two rails ran from front to back on the underside of the gun, and the handle was on the two rails. The clip was nestled near the front of the gun in between the two rails on the bottom of the weapon.

"A Trandoshan tried to attack me with it," said Kudron, "I killed him before he could get a shot out though. I eventually found a hidden cave nearby where he had been staying and I found a few supplies there. I guess he crashed here a couple months ago and has been feeding off of the animals since."

Scorch eyed the strange gun and asked, "How good is it?"

"I tested it myself, and it runs perfectly for a mid to close range weaponry. The gun fires at a steady medium rate. I found ten extra clips in the cave, and the clips come with fifty shots. I used up one clip for the testing though. The shots _are_ projectiles, but the gun appears to break the iron clip up into small pieces and shoots them out of the funnel shaped barrel. You can reload in mid clip too."

"How do I load it?" Scorch asked.

Kudron answered, "It is a very complicated procedure. But once you get it down pat it won't take you long. First, you must push this lever in the back of the handle. Hold down the lever and push the handle of the gun forward lightly."

The handle slid down the two rails. It stopped in front of the clip.

"Once it won't move any further, release the lever and pull back really hard."

The clip, now behind the gun handle, flew back to the opposite end of the rail. The clip was now protruding out of the back of the gun, with the handle in front of it. The clip was still connected to the handle though.

"Hold down the lever again and exchange magazines. Make sure you jam the clip in. Release the lever and slide the handle down the rail again. Once you reach the end, you should hear a click, you then hold the lever down once more and pull the handle back to its original position. Once you let go of the lever, the handle will stay still and you can fire."

_Amazing, those Trandoshans came up with a nice design. Now we just need to find out if it actually hurts. Those Trando SMGs are terrible. I wonder if that Trando Kudran mentioned worked for an arms company, it would explain why we haven't seen these weapons in the field yet, it must be a prototype._

"Now you try it." The officer said, handing the weapon and an extra magazine to Scorch. As complex as the reloading was, Scorch did it in just under six seconds.

Scorch asked with eagerness to shoot it. "Can I have it?"

"It's all yours, sir. No one else wants it."

"Thanks." Scorch got the weapon and its nine remaining clips. I walked up to him as he began to leave. He saw me and said, "Look at this thing. I can't wait to shoot something with it."

I smiled behind my helmet. "Twenty-Two will be hanging out with Fixer for a little while, the two of us got promoted."  
"How?" Scorch asked surprised and curious.

"For the mission we did yesterday. I'm a Corporal and Twenty-Two is a PFC now."

"That's good," Scorch said while nodding his head. I could tell he was not pleased.

"We fought at a battle circle. It was pretty fun."

Scorch just responded with a "Hmmm".

A commotion near the front entrance to the camp broke the awkward moment. We pushed our way through the crowd and reached the front. A wounded Mandalorian was lying on the ground. Another Mandalorian kneeling next to the wounded soldier was pushing his hands down on a wound in his side. The armor to his entire chest was next to him, it had been scratched up severely. On the armor, where the Mandalorian had been wounded, it was pushed inward.

A medic pushed his way through the crowd and started helping.

"What happened here?" Scorch asked.

"We were hunting in the forest. We passed the old ruins when some creature leaped out of the forest. It had a huge long spear like hand. Turlag here ran right at it and got stabbed. Boy that thing was fast!"

I became interested. "Where did you find it?"

"Near the old ruins, which stand south-west of here. Are you going out there?'

Scorch became the boss again. "Not unless he has my permission. He said puffing his chest out. "And we are going together, as a squad!"

I slowly turned my head to look at Scorch. He returned by quickly turning his head. "Our squad can tackle that beast! Gather Zephur and Draton Corporal, we're leaving in ten minutes!"


	19. Chapter 18

Note from The Typer: Thanks to all who have pursued this story with great anticipation and have spread the word. Please continue to do so, and point out any errors you come across, that includes any constructive criticism you can give out. This will be the last chapter released before my Christmas vacation. During vacation, I will hopefully finish writing and typing the rest of the campaign. And when I return, chapters will continue to be released. During vacation, you can use the time to read my commentary on the book if you have not yet done so. To read it go to and from there click on TheTyper's blog. In there is my commentary on the book, with the most recent chapter listed first. It covers any chapters in this campaign, so there is plenty of reading to do there if you are interested. In the meantime, have a merry Christmas. Thanks again.

Chapter XVIII-Day 900-Clone Wars-1400 Hours-Dxun-Near the old ruins

Scorch's plan turned out to be better than I thought. A jungle hunt would leave us alone to discuss things. And eliminating suck a monstrous beast together would give us some more prestige in the camp.

We were all scouting deep in the forest when I asked, "What have you guys been doing today?"

Fixer started, "While you guys were gone all day…" Scorch interrupted him, "Having fun!" Fixer continued, "We went to the shooting range, learned what we could about the weapons here, and impressed some of the Mandalorians."

Scorch continued the story, "Afterwards, we went to the meeting, which discussed what we, as in the clone army, are doing here. Then we went to lunch, the food was terrible by the way, and then we went to training."

"Training?" Twenty-Two asked curiously, wondering why Scorch (a Sergeant) would need training, which was what I was wondering.

Fixer answered our question. "We trained three new squads of Mandalorians. So what were you guys doing yesterday?"

Twenty-Two answered that, "Well, you know about our run ashore to Onderon." I could hear Scorch scoffing under his breath. "We went over there, spoke with the Advisor, and learned of the Separatists coming. The Advisor told us to enjoy the day. We ate at a diner, went sight seeing, visited the Advisor one last time, and went home."

"That's it?" Fixer asked.

"Twenty-Two knows who trained us." I added.

"Why'd you tell him that?" Scorch asked, slightly sounding offended.

"I asked him." Twenty-Two replied.

"Why did you ask?" Fixer asked Twenty-Two.

"I did something that reminded him of Kal Skirata," I answered them, "He asked me if we trained under him, when I said no, he asked who did train us."

"What did you do that made him think of Kal Skirata?" Fixer asked.

"He argued against the Advisor in a subject that Kal is normally touchy on." Twenty-Two answered.

Scorch replied with a surprised tone. "Boss, arguing against the Advisor! Ah, man, I missed it. Figures. What were you two arguing about?"

Twenty-Two continued to explain the discussion. He appeared to be fitting in with Scorch for the moment. I was relieved, slightly. I remained silent while the three of them talked among themselves. During the conversation I heard a slight rustle from a cluster of bushes up ahead.

Scorch was talking about some of the Mandalorians when I heard the noise again. I put my hand up in a fist, and the three of them immediately stopped talking and crouched down as one. We waited a moment, and the bush rustled again. "It's in those bushes," Fixer said.

"You think?" Scorch exaggerated.

"Quiet." I whispered as loud as I could. I pointed towards the ground and then held up a closed fist, which meant for them to hold said position. Scorch, Fixer, and Twenty-Two crouched down and all three of them held up their rifles.

I crouched down as well and balanced the gun with one hand while keeping the other hand close to my sonic detonator. Seconds went by that felt like hours, waiting for whatever was in the bushes to leap out at me. I decided to slowly make my way through the bushes. I had to push aside many branches to see where I was going. I got through a series of bushes until I was just out of sight from the rest of my squad. I squeezed through two thorn bushes just before I was face to face with a black and green skinned like creature.

It appeared almost human like. It smiled showing many incredibly sharp, skinny teeth. The animal's right hand was shaped like a long spear. And the other hand's fingers were incredibly sharp at the end. No nails were on the hands, it was as if the fingers were nails themselves. I did not know the exact height of the creature because it was hunched over constantly.

I remained still for several minutes examining the noiseless, horrific monster. And it examined me, feeling my armor and looking at me from different angles. Suddenly it let out a cry that sounded like the scream of a stuck Shyrack. The shriek ringed in my helmet and my vision vibrated. My first reaction was to cover my ears, or put my hands to my helmet. It did not take me long to figure that the creature was simply trying to weaken me so I shook my head and stabbed the beast in between the ribs. It jerked from my hand and went from a long cry to a short shriek. It then ran away in a blur. I raised my rifle and shot after it, the thing got away though.

Twenty-Two, Scorch, and Fixer called out after me as they pushed into the bushes. "Sir! What's going on in there?" called out Fixer worried.

"I came across our enemy, it's some type of, well, I don't know what it is. I think it tried to attack me." I shouted back.

"Are you hurt?" Scorch asked.

"I'm fine, it ran south after I stabbed it though. I'm going after it."

"We'll catch up to you in a minute, sir," Fixer replied.

I continued to wiggle my way through the twigs and branches. I used my vibroblade to cut down some of the branches in my way. Just a minute later I tumbled out into a clearing and started rolling down a small slope.

"Deltas, ow, be careful, a tumble is at the end of the bushes," I said warning my squad over the comlink.

After about twenty feet of rolling I stopped, lying on the ground, face up. The creature I stabbed earlier came into view. It put one of its talon like feet on my torso, grabbed the top of my helmet with his left hand, lifted it, and lifted its right arm to stab through my visor. It was about to kill me, and I was about to kick it in the stomach when Fixer rolled over me, most likely from the slope, and knocked the beast over. The two of them started wrestling each other, I quickly got up and was knocked down by Scorch, who had bumped into my legs, rolling down the slope.

"Sorry Boss," Scorch apologized, who was on his hands and knees like I was.

"No time for apo-," I was knocked over by Scorch who had been knocked over by Twenty-Two, rolling down the slope.

"Sorry sir," Twenty-Two said.

I was in fury. "Don't apologize! Shoot that thing!"

Scorch and I raised our rifles ready to fire at the creature wrestling with Fixer. Twenty-Two had pulled out a sniper rifle and also aimed for the monster, but Scorch saw Twenty-Two's weapon and pushed him over. Twenty-Two pulled the trigger by reaction and the shot skimmed the back skin of our enemy.

In reaction the monster let out another scream and ran as we tried to shoot at the blurred creature. I ran up to Fixer as the echo left our helmets.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

"Just fine, but I don't think they are." Fixer replied nudging to Twenty-Two and Scorch, who had begun fighting the moment the echo left our ears.

"Why'd you do that? I was about to kill it!" Twenty-Two yelled.

Scorch blasted back in anger. "The two of them were rolling around and fighting, it's hard to hit something with a sniper rifle while it's moving! And_you_ probably would've missed it!"  
I tried to stop the two of them. "Zip it up men!"

"I would've-," Twenty-Two stammered at Scorch, "I would've missed? You think I'm a bad shot!"

"I don't think, I_know._"

"Cut the chatter boys!"  
"I'm a better shot than you, d'kut! Your brain is so fried you can't think or look straight!"

Scorch became enraged, stole Twenty-Two's sniper rifle and pointed it at Twenty-Two's head. "How about I shoot this through your head and we'll see how fried _your_ brain is," he said with a calm but angry tone.

Twenty-Two grabbed the barrel of the rifle, pulled it directly up to his head and replied in an even darker tone, "I dare you. You kill me, and you'll never see Sev again."

The visor could not hide Scorch's loathe of what Twenty-Two just said. He swung the rifle around and knocked Twenty-Two into the mud. He brought the rifle up again and began to squeeze the trigger. I quickly pulled out my pistol and shot Scorch's arm. He shook, but did not shoot.

I looked on in horror of what had just happened, what _was_ happening.

Scorch turned his head to me. "You shot me," He said shocked.

"I couldn't let you kill him, Twenty-Two was right, you would have never seen Sev again," I told him.

"You shot me."

"I did it to save you," I said trying to convince both him and myself.

"You shot me."

I could tell Scorch felt betrayed by me. And I felt like I betrayed him, the problem was interrupted by Fixer. "Boss, you little friend is back."  
I turned around and saw a threesome of the black scary things.

"Looks like he brought friends," I said.

The group began crawling towards us and gained speed over the seconds. We didn't have that much time so I began to get my squad ready. "Scorch, get a flashbang ready. Fixer, as soon as Scorch blinds them, slice 'em up. Twenty-Two, you're with me."  
I turned around and saw Twenty-Two still on the ground. I grabbed him by the arm and pulled him back up. I rattled his helmet to slap him out of it. "You're with me."

He nodded after a moment and I grabbed the sniper rifle from Scorch. As I handed the rifle back to Twenty-Two I whispered, "We'll talk about this later," in an angry voice. "Delta Squad, lets go!"

Fixer, Twenty-Two, and I began to mow down the farthest creature. They had the same ability to brush away pain just like us. "Scorch, flash 'em and shoot. Twenty-Two, hold back and snipe," I commanded.

Scorch tossed the flashbang down the isle of trees, the grenade bounced off of one of the monster's head and exploded. I charged up to one of them and kicked his head, it fell back, and I jumped on top of it. One of the aliens were standing and squealing in fear from the flashbang explosion. Fixer took out his vibroblade and sliced it across his enemy's neck. Greenish blood splattered and squirted across Fixer's visor. As I jumped on my enemy it came out of blindness and brought its feet up, then pushed me straight up into the air. Before I came down my enemy rolled over and I slammed the ground. _Thud._

I brought my head up and as it leaped at me, Twenty-Two shot its back with a sniper round. Scorch bombarded it with blaster rounds. I pushed myself up and rammed into it. I landed on top of it. But before I could stab his head it let out another shriek. It then knocked me over, got up, and ran away once more.

As I thought it in my head, we all shouted out "blast".

"Lets go!" I commanded. "I'm getting sick of this guy."

After pursuing the creature for many hours we came upon an open circular spot. In the center of this open field was a large round ball like structure, weeded with large branches and vines. It raised about sixty feet into the air.

"What is this thing?" Scorch asked.

"Looks like some sort of cocoon, or nest," I commented.

Twenty-Two answered everyone's question. "It's a nest. I do not know the type of creatures we have been fighting for the past few hours, but I remember this is its nest, and it is called a dragr, a complete design of vines, weeds, and strong branches. Ninety percent of the branches should originate in the center. You plant a charge at that center, it'll burn everything, it's the center support area."

"Okay," I said. "Lets blow this filth weed up. Scorch, Fixer, stay outside and keep as many of those monsters out of the nest as possible."

"Got it," Fixer replied.

"Twenty-Two, you're going in with me, stay high, and guard me with that sniper rifle."

He simply nodded in reply.

I put my rifle away and pulled myself up to a clearing. Complex networks of large branches wove through the next. The branches were as hard as a trunk. I examined the branches for one that looked like it went to the center and was sturdy enough to carry my weight. One was nearby, and it took a very direct route. I hauled myself onto the branch and pulled out my rifle. Twenty-Two had climbed quite higher, but was visible.

I quickly made my way to the center, trying to stay aware of the branch I was balancing on. In the center, the branches spun together into a ball like structure. I crept forward and balanced on the thick branch as I got closer and closer to the central support. I watched the branches from different angles. As I advanced step-by-step, I heard a low rumble. I looked up and saw my friend hanging from a branch with all of its limbs. I brought my rifle up immediately, but the creature leaped on top of me and the Mandalorian rifle launched out of my hand. It fell into the deep abyss of the nest. I then noticed that the ground definitely was deeper inside the nest than outside. I quickly ejected my vibroblade and sliced through the joint in which the forearm and hand connected, the hand flung off with the movement of the vibroblade. The creature shrieked in pain a moment later, as the forearm slid off my armor. The monster was caught off guard and began to fall off the branch. The creature, in a last effort took its long spear arm and pierced through my armor. Luckily, it _only_ pierced my armor, but it dragged me with him. As we fell I grabbed onto a vine, praying that it held our weight. My enemy, trying to get back onto the branch, began swinging on my armor, with his spear still lodged into it.

"Twenty-Two!" I called out in terror.

"The branches are blocking my view," he called back, "I can't hit it."

I would not last long so I quickly thought up an idea. With my free hand, I ejected my vibroblade and went to cut off a part of the monster's spear, but I was too late. The creature had thrown itself, with incredible might, using my armor as a counterweight, up onto the branch we fell off. It evilly growled and laughed as it raised it spear arm, and threw it at my face, just as a skinny, near invisible beam shot through the side of its head. The body became lifeless and fell into the darkness.

I hauled myself back onto the large branch and lied down for a moment. "Nice shot." I thanked Twenty-Two.

"Your welcome."

The two of us made our way to the center support and placed the charge. We got out of there with little trouble from the remainder beasts.

The four of us were outside the sphere. I tossed Twenty-Two the trigger. "Will you do the honors?"

Twenty-Two lifted the button and pressed it. A small yellow puff of fire could be seen inside the nest. It quickly spread to the other branches. You could nearly see where every branch went as it lit up inside. Eventually a top corner portion of the nest collapsed slightly. The corner below it crumbled beneath the heavy portion and fell underground. The nest was torn in half and branches could be seen that were torn in half. The left side of the nest fell over into the left part of the pit. Beasts began falling out into the pit and large chunks of branches flew at us. Dirt was spewed up out of the pit with a large cloud. The smoke settled and all that was left was the black hole.

All that remained were small twigs on the ground, and one dead creature, lying on the ground.

"Let's go Deltas." I said.

"Wait." Twenty-Two knelt down and cut off the creature's head. He stood back up, holding the head as he looked at us. "Prestige," He said, and caught up with us. We walked away and made our way back to the camp.


	20. Chapter 19

Note from The Typer: Alright, that was a long vacation...too long for you guys. I had exams, PC trouble, and just a slew of things that made getting new chapters out a low priority. I'll make it up to you though. First, an incredibly great conclusion to Campaign 2. Of course, this has to come through more than one chapter. It'll probably end on chapter 25, at the least/most, I don't know. Second, I made up my mind on what I'm going to be doing for Campaign 3, or the setting for it. But the hard decision to make was actually to delay Campaign 3's release. Instead of coming back next school year and starting everything up again, I decided to dedicate my work on another book. Rebellion matters a lot to me, a whole lot. I've been working on this for almost three years now, come this March or April. And I can't make a great campaign without time to write it. I write, then I type, then I "perfect", and then I post. It's a time consuming job that needs more than just a single summer to finish or even start and get halfway through, I have other hobbies and dedications in writing. During the summer, and what I call the "game lull", I will continue my work on Half-Life 3: Combined Forces, another one of my Fan Fiction stories here that wound up horrible. I think I have a lot of potential in the story idea, I just need to work some character flaws out and just get writing on it like I have with Rebellion. Maybe by Fall of this year I can come up with enough to release a part or section like I have done with Rebellion. If you haven't heard of the Half-Life series, you probably wouldn't get the story, but you should definitely think about picking up the Orange Box in the meantime. That'll give you enough background information. During the same time, I will also continue work on Campaign 3, and as Combined Forces gets to that stage where I just have to type and "perfect" and post, I'll have plenty of more time to work on Campaign 3. It'll be dramatic, intense, and hopefully delivering the same amount of emotion with the next character I'll be focusing on as found in this campaign. Thanks for just reading the note. I decided to let you guys e-mail me as well instead of using the private message service. This is a privilage though, don't abuse it or I'll change the address. I cannot type this as an e-mail address or it'll be deleted off of the post. So I will be putting spaces in between each letter. Just take out the spaces. Thanks, and enjoy the rest of the campaign. j u s t i n f 2 0 1 0 y a h o o . c o m.

Chapter XIX-Day 900-2100 Hours-Clone Wars-Dxun-Mandalorian Camp

We returned to the camp wounded, bloody, limping, tired, and victorious. But when we returned, Mandalorians were waiting, staring at us. First, the guard noticed us making our way out of the darkness, then the guard shouted, "They're back! Zeb and his squad are back!"

The heads of dozens of Mandalorians turned to see if the words spoken were true, and they were. A group of men came out to slap us on the shoulder, to beat our armor, and to congratulate us. The commotion developed and the group turned into a crowd. The crowd cheered and men came up to us asking what we encountered, if we killed it, _how_ we killed it.

We slowly moved towards Mandalore's building. And as we moved, the crowd followed, encasing us in a circle of Mandalorians. Eventually, the four of us got inside Mandalore's base, dozens of men stood behind us. We stood in a straight line, at attention in front of Mandalore.

"I was told the four of you went into the jungle, without my permission, to fight against an unknown force, where you could have died. The four of you are one of my best squads and have been passing up almost all of the Mandalorians, exceeding them! What if I lost you out there! You start showing yourselves worthy of squads of your own, and then go out and try to kill yourselves!"

We stood at attention, taking our punishment.

"So, how was it?"

Scorch's head rose slightly, "A pain in the butt, there were more than one of those things."

Twenty-Two pulled off his pack and pulled out the head he had cut off. "What were these things?" He said as he handed it to Mandalore.

Mandalore stood there staring at the head for a moment.

"An ancient species that is native to Dxun. They are called Shrumans. It is amazing you found them. There are only a dozen or so nests in all of Dxun. Did you destroy their nest?"

"Yes." Scorch answered.

"The four of you will be awarded the Scarred Helmet for your bravery, and outstanding ability to take down these beasts. And it looks like this act has boosted our morale once more. Let us celebrate tonight once more. Well done, squad."

I add in between cheers, "We would be honored to receive these awards Mandalore…" Another Mandalorian cut me off, shouting, "Look!" He pointed towards the dark sky. There was no doubt that everyone was squinting to see what the Mandalorian was pointing at, but my squad could excellently see it against the sky. We had seen it dozens of times. And it was something that I did not expect. Illuminating the black sky, lit by stars, was two, not one, but two Separatist Capitol Ships, entering the system.

"Fierfek," I heard Scorch and Mandalore mutter. I whispered it as well. This caused problems, big problems. There was only one Republic ship above Onderon, and that was a Cruiser. The ships of the Grand Army were deadly no doubt, but a single Cruiser would not be able to stand up to two Capitol Ships, it would barely survive one.

"Staff meeting!" Mandalore shouted out.

"Yes sir." Scorch replied.

Fixer and Scorch made their way into Mandalore's quarters, several other high ranking Mandalorians followed, almost running. Twenty-Two and I both knew trouble was coming, we went back to the barracks, closed our door, and locked it. We both switched our comm. units to the Advisor.

"Advisor, what's going on?" I shouted, "The Separatists are already here!"

"Calm down, Three-Eight," The Advisor said trying to reassure me. "We are in for a rough fight ahead, but we can win this with your help. Can you go to yesterday's LZ?"  
"Not without leaving two of my men behind, they're in a meeting."

"Well contact me when you are on your way. We need to take you back to the _Striker_ if we are coming out of this alive."

"All right, Delta Lead out."

The two of us switched into comm. between the two of us. I was getting nervous. _If the Striker is taken out, we will be stranded here._ _Obviously, they can call in reinforcements, but that can take forever depending on where the nearest Republic ship is._

I began to pace the room in fear and worry. I was muttering curses under my breath in the Mandalorian tongue. Twenty-Two sat on his bead and watched me.

"What do you thinks going to happen?" Twenty-Two asked me.

I stopped and turned to him. I thought for a moment and then said, "We're going to win."

"What about the Mandalorians? They're not doing anything wrong. Not yet at least. This is our culture, this is our civilization. We're just going to kill them? We're going to betray them? They're our blood! Our brothers!"

"That's not what _they_ think Twenty-Two! They hate us! They've mutilated our kind, most of them. I wouldn't expect any treatment different from these guys. There's more at stake than just our duty to our brothers that hate us! There's my duty to my brothers that love me! I save those that hate me, and I lose those that matter to me! Do you understand me!! If you don't realize that, if you don't get the reasons why I act how I do, if you don't understand MY #1 RULE, then you won't survive under me! I'll tear you apart before you tear my squad apart! It matters that much to me!! Even if you're under the subversion of the Advisor, I'd kill you before letting your actions destroy my squad!"

Nothing but silence followed for a minute. Then Twenty-Two stood on his feet and said nothing but, "Yes, Boss."

* * *

We left the barracks and saw a bunch of Mandalorians running towards Mandalore's quarters. 

"What's going on?" I called out to Drael.

Drael called back, "It's Zeb and Zephur, they're part of the clone army! Infiltrators!"

They knew. And it would not be long before they started running after _us_.

_What about Fixer and Scorch? I can't leave them behind, not to the slaughter of the Mandalorians._

Panic struck as my back tingled with a numbing fear. I did not know which to do. But standing there any longer would be worse than making a choice. So I made up my mind and Twenty-Two and I made our way to the camp exit as everyone tried to get into Mandalore's quarters. The second we hit the forest and were out of sight, Twenty-Two and I started sprinting.

Once we were out of view and in the forest I linked up to the Advisor. "Advisor, get a ship down here now! Our cover is blown! I repeat, our cover is blown! Six-Two and Forty have been captured! We're on our way to the LZ!"

The Advisor quickly replied, "A ship will be there in five minutes."

"Try to get there in four, a single squad of these guys could take the two of us out."

"Got it."

I hated leaving Fixer and Scorch behind, but the two of us could not stand up against three hundred Mandalorians. I even thought about turning around and sneaking in to save them. But once you make a decision in battle, you don't change your mind. Things just get worse from there.

A minute after we left the camp we could hear the Mandalorians shouting and chasing after us. The sound intensified as we got closer and closer to the landing zone we had just been at yesterday.

"That gunship better be there Advisor, or we're going to have some problems," I warned.

We dared not look back, or we would just slow down. We kept our heads up and kept running passing several Shrummans, Bomas, and Cannoks along the way.

Finally, the two of us reached the LZ where a Republic Gunship was just then landing down. A soldier in a side cannon facing us shouted out, "Hit the dirt!"

Twenty-Two and I leaped down as a green phaser beam sliced its way through Drael and Dragon. It turned out the Mandalorians were right on our tails. We hoisted ourselves onto the gunship as it lifted off, exchanging fire with our new enemies.

"We'll pick up your armor and your weapons later," shouted the pilot over the roar of the ship's engines, "the Advisor said that it is at the highest priority that you two get back to the _Striker_ alive."

"What about the rest of my squad?"

"I'm sorry sir, but I was just told to get to the LZ and pick you two up."

I popped my helmet off and breathed a bit of fresh air, cursed, and put the helmet back on before leaving Dxun's atmosphere.

_Blast it, Advisor. He better send a dispatch platoon out there to get Fixer and Scorch._

It was just now that I realized what I had done. I had left my two men behind. It was my only choice but I'd rather stay there and be tortured together than leave my men behind. It gave them a feeling of desertion that I left them. Truly I did not, or I at least did not intead. But such an action leaves that impression.

_I have to go back._

* * *

Twenty-Two, our escorts, and I were all practically running to the briefing room. We went down several hallways and corridors until finally passing through two sets of doors. The briefing room was really a meeting room. A table with a holo-projector running was in the center of the table. The walls, and floor, were a shiny, white metal. The Advisor was alone in the room, looking at a large view screen split between two video links. One feed was going to Command and the other appeared to link up to another ship's bridge. 

The Advisor had turned around at the sound of our entrance. "Delta Lead, Twenty-Two, we must hurry, there is not too much time to explain."

I had taken off my helmet and interrupted him, concerned for my men, "Advisor, Six-Two and Forty were captured. You have to send a few squads back to rescue them."

"I'm sorry Three-Eight, but we cannot do anything for them."

"What are you talking about? A couple dispatch squads could get them out of there."

"Out of the question, the Separatist ships are getting closer, and they're in range to stop all space traffic in between here, Onderon, and Dxun. If we send a couple platoons in to save Six-Two and Forty, we'll lose most of them. It's too much of a risk."

"Advisor, my boys are down there! I could lose 'em any minute!"

"That's a risk we're going to have to take Three-Eight."

I lost it. I grabbed the Advisor by one hand, lifted him up against a wall and yelled quietly, like we were in a whispering argument, "You listen to me good and well here. I lost a man just three months ago! I'm not about to lose the rest of my squad just because you're afraid of losing a platoon or two!"

The Advisor lashed back in anger. "Do not think you are the only one in this war Three-Eight! Do not think that you, _or_ your squad members matter more than anything else! Do NOT think you are indispensable! You are here to fight in a war, and if necessary, DIE! That goes for everyone in this army, including your men! Now get yourself in line!"

I opened my mouth to argue back but stopped myself, looked over at Twenty-Two , and then looked into the black, faceless visor of the Advisor's helmet. I sighed heavily, and slowly eased the Advisor back down.

He walked over to the table. "Now the only way we can make it through this alive is with your help Three-Eight, and you Twenty-Two."

The holo-projector showed a capitol-class Separatist ship, like the ones closing in on our position with every second.

"I'll make this quick. It turns out the Separatists have prototype engines on one of the ships. Most engines rely on coolant and fuel to keep them both running and stable in terms of heat. Well the Separatists have discovered a new method that solves both problems. It is called "Cold Fusion," it was created hundreds of years ago by a Dr. Erik Courter. But it was forgotten due to the Earth's sudden find of Oil in Antarctica. It fuels itself and also keeps itself cool using the very coldness of space itself, also allowing it to self-sustain. All you need is a single det pack, one that'll take you twenty seconds to charge. That'll overheat the core of the engine enough for it to meltdown. The engine will search for a source of cold, but it will only be covered by extreme heat, and so the engine will be forced to use that source."

"And just how do you expect us to do that? Take a float out the airlock?" Twenty-Two asked.

"Not exactly Twenty-Two. We plan to launch a covert, camouflage shuttle in the midst of a staged firefight."

Twenty-Two nodded, I didn't. I was too concerned for Scorch and Fixer.


	21. Chapter 20

Note from The Typer: I apologize for the chapter being so short. I promise the next chapter will be quite longer containing more than one interesting scenario. But as mediocre as this chapter will seem to you just because of its length, we have something to celebrate: this chapter, which I do not find too great, is my 20th chapter release! That means it has been exactly 20 releases ago, not on a periodical rate, when I began the journey of releasing this grand story to the public. It had been in work quite a bit before-hand. And I hope there will be many more chapters to come with an even growing number of fans. Thanks for all of the support and spreading of word. Special thanks to my two most frequent fans, Ranger24, and Master Sarge300. Please continue to spread the word and give me some pointers for my story in places that need help. Enjoy the stubby chapter! I promise, a lot more to come on the next chapter.

Chapter XX-Day 900-2200 Hours-Clone Wars-Republic Cruiser Striker-Covert Shuttle

I had not yet rode in one of those camouflage, covert shuttles. All I heard is that they could hide in space well, but were also slow, and could be torn apart if anyone happened to see it. It was small and compact, just the thing needed to get inside a hanger bay undetected. From there we could plant a charge on the engine and hightail it out of there.

In the shuttle, Twenty-Two and I were cramped up front. There were four seats on these shuttles, two for the pilot and co-pilot, and two passenger seats behind these. We had the passenger seats, and they would have been comfortable except the fact that we were wearing Mandalorian armor that has a thickness nearly equivalent to Katarn class armor. Simply said, we were in a tight fit.

The shuttle engines subtly turned on and the shuttle lifted off the ground. But as it passed the _Striker's_ gravitational field, vertigo, and that weightless feel of space kicked in.

"Here we go," said the pilot, a nameless clone I never really knew, "activating cloak field."

A new low hum on the ship could be heard, but nothing in my vision happened.

"Okay, we should have a clear run to the Separatist Capital ship Things might get a little intense once the fight starts up, but we should be able to manage."

The intercom cackled as another ship called us. "Doomsday, this is Blue Squadron Leader, we're about to engage the enemy. It might get a little hot. If you need help, let us know."

"Copy that blue leader," The pilot replied.

I could see out of the corner of the pilot window. About ten clicks away, there were ships, shooting at each other in green and red flashes and orange explosions. What amazed me was that no sound could be heard from the battle. There was only complete and utter silence. Nothing but the low hum of the ship's engines and comm. chatter could be heard. _Interesting_.

"Missile detected! It's heat seeking!" Shouted the pilot.

"We're going to try to get out of its range before it finds us," Commented the co-pilot. "If you have to puke, go in your helmet, you'll need to breathe through your O2 tank if you're thrown into space."

The co-pilot cursed, "It locked onto our heat signature instead. We'll have to out-last it. Hang on!"

The ship tightly veered down and to the right. After stabilizing itself after a moment, it pulled up to the left while rolling left. From there, the ship zigzagged to the right and left repeatedly. It got me dizzy from repetition.

"It's gone," said the co-pilot after about twenty seconds of fancy flying.

I relaxed for a moment, but then the co-pilot said something else to the pilot, "Wait. Five ships are approaching us. They're getting closer. I think they saw the missile following us. If the stealth field holds, you should be able to maneuver out of this, but we may need help."

"I'll see if I can outrun them for now, call in the ships anyways. We can use them as a distraction."

The co-pilot pushed a button, "Blue Leader, we got a few ships coming our way. Would you be so kind as to have some of your boys out here to cover us before we get into real trouble?"

"Sure thing," said a voice over the comm. unit after a moment.

A minute later, the ship began to veer once more. "You're going to have to do better that Blue Leader. That one almost hit us."

Suddenly, a large red streak appeared right in front of us.

"The Separatist ship's auto turrets have a lock on us! We're leaving camo." The pilot turned to the co-pilot, "Convert shield energy to speed at ninety percent!"

"Yes sir," the co-pilot replied.

The ship sped up. It was only then when I realized how large the Separatist ship was.

_This plan better work._

An array of missile fire stuck a part of the ship next to the hanger. Just a second later, the shields keeping the enemy ships from entering the hanger flickered and vanished.

"Engines to 100!" The pilot said.

Suddenly, the shuttle speed rocketed, and I could see a large metal door sliding over the hanger bay, sealing itself. It looked like we could make it, but the door smashed our engines as we made it in.

"Hold on!" The pilot shouted. The ships was now diving towards the ground, barely moving upwards. We got closer and closer to the ground, and finally, SMASH!


	22. Chapter 21

Note from The Typer: I'm back, thanks for all the patience. 'Nuff said.

Chapter XXI-Day 900-Clone Wars-2220 Hours-Separatist Prototype Capital Ship

Blurred vision confused me. _I must have blacked out when we crashed._ My vision finally cleared up a bit. I saw a Super Battle Droid charging his gun. It suddenly jerked back and shot the ceiling by mistake. Twenty-Two had jumped on its back and began stabbing it repeatedly. I got up and saw the pilot and co-pilot had been killed in the crash. _We were sent through the window!_ A couple battle droids were shooting at Twenty-Two, I grabbed my assault rifle from the crashed ship, the rest of my equipment, and started firing at the droids.

After unlodaing a clip on the battle droids, the SBD had managed to grab Twenty-Two and throw him on the ground. It began charging up its hand. I checked the droid with my shoulder, and the shot missed Twenty-Two's head. I popped off the panel in the back of the SBD's head, pulled out a sonic grenade and inserted it. I grabbed Twenty-Two and we ran. We only had seven seconds left. The SBD stood up and began to charge his weapon at us. The two of us made our way up to the central power room as the SBD exploded in a sonic ball implosion.

The central power room was a link to the three other main support systems throughout the ship. The main room had a large metal pillar in the room that powered all auto-turrets on the outside of the ship. Three separate doors lead to the thee main support systems. Two droids were managing the manual turrets. The two of us quickly sliced up the droids and placed a small demolition charge on the auto-turret pilar. Two mini-turrets on the ceiling attempted to kill us, but were useless against the Mandalorian armor we were wearing. We did not even bother wasting ammo on the pathetic things.

I went over to the power core that ran the ship and placed two charges near the white core. They most likely had a backup generator somewhere, but this would give the _Striker_ more time to fight back with the ship's systems down temporarily. The ship rumbeled as cannon fire bombarded the capitol ship. Twenty-Two had placed two charges on the life support system running the shields.

We detonated the currently placed charges on the life support system. The ship shook, and the lights went out for a brief ten seconds. Then they flickered back to life. _Figures._ All that was left was the engine room. Two more pathetic turrests gaurded the hallway into the engine room. We once again passed by, got in there, and planted our charge.

We got into the hanger bay before I pushed the detonator. The ship began to shake violently just moments after pressing the trigger. It was then I realized we had no ride out. "Three-Eight, Twenty-Two, get back to the hanger bay," called the Advisor, "I'm sending a small ship in to pick you up."

"Don't bother Advisor, tell any ships to clear the area. We're getting out of here by another mean." I shouted back.

"And what would that be Three-Eight?"

"Yeah," Twenty-Two added.

The ship rumbeled once more.

"No time to explain," I said, "Just pull all ships nearby out of there."

I tapped Twenty-Two and pointed at a nearby scout ship.

"Think you can fly that thing?" I asked him.

"It's our only shot out of here," he replied as we started running to the ship, "It's the Separatist's fastest in-system fighter."

We quickly got into the small ship and I hopped in back while Twenty-Two strapped himself in and took the controls.

"Oh, this is a cince. It's all in droid command talk. I'll put the engines and shields on an eighty to twenty ratio. Once we need to, I'll fire the afterburners. That should get us far enough."

The ship quickly rose and shot forward. I saw one of the hanger walls blow out as we made our way out of the second hanger opening. I jolted into the back of my seat as the afterburners fired. We sped out as the engines of the ship attempted to gain power and stabilize, but failed and hot balls of fire blew out of the engies in many directions. Finally, the ship split and the back end colided with the back end of the second Capitol ship.

"That good enough for you Advisor?" Twenty-Two shouted over his comm unit and the explosion.

"Delta Lead, we detected one ship leaving just before the explosion, were you on it?"

"We're just fine Advisor," I replied.

"Okay, report back to the _Striker_. We're sending dropships down to Dxun. I want you to oversee the rescue of Six-Two and Four-Oh."

"Sorry Advisor, we're on a ship already. We'll just meet the troops when they get down there."

"Three-Eight, listen to me. You and Twenty-Two are the only ones who know the layout of the base. If you head down there and we lose you, we'll be ripped to shreds when we make the final assault. If you come back to the Striker and guide the dispatch troops I am sending, then maybe Six-Two, Forty, and the rest of the army we have here have a chance to make it out of this alive."

I sat there thinking for a moment, nothing but the small whine of the ship's engine in hearing.

"Sir," said Twenty-Two, turning around in his chair and looking at me, "Course of action?"

_Not expendable my plasma scorched butt._

* * *

I moved my jaw from side to side, grinding my teeth together. "Regroup with the _Striker_ and land. Time to save our boys."

Twenty-Two got back to the _Striker_ as quickly as possible. The two of us were rushed through multiple hallways once more and wound up inside a dark room with a large viewscreen against the far wall. A few steps into the room and there was a short four steps onto a lower level of the room in which you could take a seat among dozens and watch the viewscreen.

The Advisor stood up at the sight of our enterance and quickly welcomed us to the nearby chairs. He introduced Twenty-Two and I to Lieutenant Lupo, the officer in charge of the dispatch squad. Even though Walon and uncle Kal did not see eye to eye on their terms of how to train Mandalorians, Kal did teach me something of advice that has always stuck with me. _In any situation that is not yet agressive, it pays to be polite._ I offered the Lieutenant my hand. He stared at it for a moment and then began walking over to the steps. "He's a little anxious," said The Advisor as he attempted to apologize for Lieutenant Lupo's attitude, "You may have secured our ability to outlast the battle for now, thanks to that amazing move you two pulled on the Separatists. But some other problems and situations have arised. For now, take a seat. You will be much more comfortable if we dealt with the situation sitting. It may take a while as well."  
I turned towards the steps and Twenty-Two followed. I took a seat to the left of the Advisor, who was seated to the left of Lupo. Twenty-Two took the seat to my left and Lupo's assistant was at the end of the row on the right.

The Advisor took the moment to explain the situation. "Okay. The capital ship you two destroyed crashed into the other ship. And though it is not destroyed yet, its systems are failing rapidly. It is only a matter of time before the ship crash lands into Dxun. To avoid extra losses, the Separatists are evactuating all the ships they can and making their way to Dxun. It would appear the only real threat left to deal with would be the Mandalorians. But we intercepted a transmission coming from the Separatist's remaining capital ship. Most of it was heavily filled with static but we happened to hear a request for reinforcments from a nearby planet, just on the border of deep space."

"Well there's no problem though," commented Twenty-Two as he leaned his head near me to get into the conversation. "If we intercepted the transmission then the Separatists have no idea that the message was stopped. And whoever was on the other line won't get it from wherever they are."

"That's just the thing," said Lieutenant Lupo. "Why would a Separatist ship roam just outside the boarder of known space? Any outer-rim worlds are hardly worth anything in this war, strategically or on terms of gaining something useful. Both sides of the war are faltering on credits, and can't afford risk missions out there. Even if the Separatists were that daft, my assistant looked up some figures and found nothing useful on any of the planets in the region where the transmission was headed."

The assistant butted in, "I only got an estimate of where the transmission was heading though. I couldn't get any good round specifics, and we won't for another while."

"Another while?" I asked. "How'll we improve on the location data if the transmission path has been stopped."

"Because the transmission was let go," The Advisor said gravely.

"You let it go!" Twenty-Two repeated.

"I had no other choice," said The Advisor, defending himself. "I held it for as long as I could and relayed a message to command. They told me to let it continue on its path. The war is getting thicker and harder to make any movements against the Separatists without being spotted ahead of time, _and_ vice-versa."

Lupo finished The Advisor's argument. "If the Separatists have some sort of tactic or something to gain out there in those deep space colonies, then we need to know what they're doing and get a step ahead of them."

"The recipients have not yet replied to the message though. It should be arriving within the next half-hour or so," commeted Lupo's assistant.

"Meanwhile," drifted The Advisor, "Let me get you two updated on the current event of affairs on Dxun. Two dispatch squads of four are moving into Dxun as we speak."

"Which squads are on their way?" I asked.

"The only two we had on board, Lambda and Zeta of 9th battalion."

"Good," I replied out loud, and in my head.

_I don't want anything other than the best on this._

"How are you going in silent?"

Lupo's assistant answered that one. "We're transmitting the engine frequencies of the ships with the two dispatch squads as a single frequency back at the Mandalorian sattelite reading all movement around Dxun. AND, we're using ID tags taken off of the Separatist ship out there slowly falling into the atmosphere."

I nodded my head, then leaned over to Twenty-Two. I asked him silently, "Is that the best technique?"  
He leaned in towards me and replied, "I'm not too much of an expert on frequency tactics, but the only problem I can find is the position this frequency is sent from. They're probably sending the signal to one of the ships with a dispatch squad to re-send the signal down to the Mandalorians. But once that Separatist ship starts getting close enough to Dxun for the Mandalorian sattelites to pick _its_ signal up, their cover is blown."

"So we're under a time limit here?"

"That's what it seems like."

_Shoot._

A voice kicked into hidden speakers in the room. "Sir, the dispatch squads are entering Dxun's atmosphere. One of the squad leaders is requesting your help."

The Advisor replied, "Patch the sound through the speakers fourteen."

Hidden speakers throughout the room began to crackle and a low rumble in the background could be heard. The Advisor quickly popped his helmet off and spoke into the air. "Dispatch squad Lambda leader, can you hear me?"

Through the noise of the speakers came a low, gruff voice. "I read you Advisor. We're about to head through Dxun's atmosphere. And I'm a little shaky for my men. I want to know a little bit more about what we're up against."

The Advisor leaned forward and looked down the row at me. I nodded, popped my helmet off quickly and spoke to the air. "Lambda leader, you hear me?"

"Loud and clear," replied the voice, "Who is this?"

"This is RC-Delta Three-Eight. Me and my squad were the ones responsible for this mess. But that's a whole different story. What you need to know is that you are headed up against Mandalorians, _real_ Mandalorians. They are about twice as strong as a republic commando can be, and will not, I repeat will not welcome your _visit _with some chaffa cakes. Two of my men have been captured by the Mandalorians, they will be in blue and gold armor, probably helmetless, may be currently in torture, and will of course look like yourselves." I paused for a moment, and the Advisor took it to talk a little bit.

"You will be set down aproximately one click north of the Mandalorian base. Head south to the base. When you come across it Delta Three-Eight will provide further instructions. For now Seventy-Seven, turn on your HUD-cam uplink."

"Copy that." The large viewscreen in front of us turned into a mainstream video of a clone's helmet. Through the helmet I could see three other clones in armor slightly bulkier than those of an ARCs but less bulky than a Republic Commandos.

"Uplink your audio too," said The Advisor's assistant.

The speakers in the room now rumbled with the sound of the gunship's engines. After a moment of no talking, the gunship pilot hollered to Lambda squad. "We're entering Dxun's atmosphere, I'm going to put the engines to silence. We'll be landing down in a minute or two so I suggest you get your weapons ready."

Seventy-Seven asked what we should take with us. "Use the heavy, quiet stuff. Moderate long range weaponry should do the trick. More than anything though, do everything you can to _not_ engage these guys. They have heavy blasters, and taking one of these guys down on your own would require ten minutes alone. You don't have that. Not to mention, the Mandalorians would not hesitate to kill my men the second an alarm went off."

The pilot called out to both squads, "We've arrived at your drop. Have a nice trip." The pilot then shifted the person he was talking to. "Advisor, should I head back to _The Striker_, or wait for Zeta and Lambda to extract and pick them up?"

I leaned forward and stared down at The Advisor. He turned his head and looked at me. Without speaking, The Advisor almost telepathically knew my preference. "Keep your engines prepped Ninety-Nine."

I sat back into my chair, but my muscles did not relax. _Good_, I thought in reference to The Advisor's choice.

The two squads of clones roped down alongside the gunship and raised their weapons immediately. The display through the HUD was dark, and Seventy-Seven immediately noticed and took action. "Squads, turn on night vision. Keep your head lamps off, don't want to let anyone see us coming."

My gut turned and twisted. I leaned forward in anxiety. I then gave some advice. "Keep your eyes open men. There's more than just Mandalorians on Dxun. We encountered a beast trying to get into the camp."

I saw Seventy-seven look around for the seven other clones that were with him, and then nodded his head southward. Together, the seven clones began to head south in a somewhat horizontal line. Their weapons never lowered as they were constantly alert. They seemed very aware of their surroundings and knew where not to step.

A number of minutes passed without anything happening. The time passed slowly and I began to wonder why nothing had happened. I argued with myself as to why the Mandalorians had not spotted the squads.

_Why haven't they found them yet? They simply are not in range to be spotted. But with everything going on, you'd expect the Mandalorians to be sending scouts out. They could be preparing instead of scouting or doing recon work._

I felt so helpless, I had very little control over what was going on. I was limited to the ability of these clones, and also the overall choices of The Advisor. Meanwhile, Fixer and Scorch were probably being tortured.

After about ten minutes of slowly making their way to the base, Seventy-Seven raised his hand up flatly, they all crouched down and froze. Seventy-Seven aimed down his scope and pointed out to us spotters on top of buildings. _They are watching for us._

"You catch that Advisor?" asked Seventy-Seven.  
"We've got it," I replied. "Stay hidden. Make your way around the forest border south-west. From there, you should be able to find a tall, skinny building. It is the crew quarters. I wouldn't be surprised if the Mandalorians are doing an interrogation of my men in there."

"Copy that," replied Seventy-Seven as he motioned for his two squads to close in on him. He briefly spoke to his squad, "Keep your eyes open men. Recon formation."

The soldiers shifted quietly through the woods in their camoflague armor. They rounded around the base slowly until they came upon a dim yellow light coming from the just out of sight crew quarters. Seventy-Seven raised his hand, and I could see why. A patrol guard had entered into the range of the viewscreen. As the other men in the squad noticed what Seventy-Seven saw, they raised their weapons. Seventy-Seven aimed down his scope and set his sights on the Mandalorian.

Seventy-Seven's deep voice entered, "Advisor, I have a clear shot. Do I take it?"

The Advisor slowly shifted in his seat and then spoke. "Uh, Lambda Leader you were cleared to take down any hostiles you believe to be necessary deaths. The call is yours."

Silence once again followed. Then, "Delta Lead, _should_ I take this shot?"

I ground my teeth together while thinking. I then replied, "You still have the element of surprise on your hands. I would recommend taking advantage of it until it is no longer necessary. If the guard does not spot you, let him pass. If you think your cover is about to be blown, I'll alert you and have your men silently jump him."

A quiet _copy_ replied back.

The Mandalorian unlatched his helmet and breathed the fresh air. He took a few steps toward the edge of the forest directly in front of Seventy-Seven. He peered around for a bit, then popped his helmet back, turned around, and went back inside. Seventy-Seven spoke to his men. "Trasher, Indigo, Ratchet, on me. The rest of you stay outside and keep on your toes for guards. Be ready to let the fireworks fly when I say so."

Seventy-Seven made his way out of the forest as three other clones emerged from the trees and bushes. The three clones fell into formation behind Seventy-Seven as he made his way up to the door in which the guard had just gone back into. Seventy-Seven pulled out a suppressor for his gun and began to fasten it onto the barrel of the DC. He turned around and watched his squadmates do the same. He then slowly opened the door and peeked inside. It was dimly lit by a hanging light. No one was in sight. Seventy-Seven slid the door open more, leaned inside, and peered around the corners of the room to make sure the room was empty. It was. He then slid the door completely open and moved into the room, keeping an eye on a nearby hallway to his right. The squad filed into the room slowly, each member fastened his sights on a certain opening in the room, whether it be a door or a hallway.

"Which way," whispered Seventy-Seven.

"Take the hallway," I said.

The hallway was dark with a light coming from the left in the room at the end of the hallway. The men crouched down and quietly stuck to the left wall and rounded the corner of the hallway to find an armory. The armory was also empty.

Twenty-Two spoke out. "There's a staircase behind you," Seventy-Seven spun around and saw the stairs, "Quietly make your way up the stairs. The barracks are just inside the door at the head of the stairs."

I leaned forward and watched Seventy-Seven slowly make his way up the stairs, down the tiny hall, and to the door.

"Hold," I said. Seventy-Seven stopped, crouched, and signaled for his men to stop. "Swtich to thermal view." Seventy-Seven did so and the HUD changed to show a cluster of thermal readings inside the room ahead. I could see one of the red blobs throw a punch at one blob of a pair, tied to a chair.

_There they are_.

"I think we can take it from here, Three-Eight," Seventy-Seven commented.

"Take them by surprise, Lambda lead."

Seventy-Seven turned around to his squad and signaled to breach. The three clones lined up behind him. Seventy-Seven pulled out a flashbang, pushed down the button, swung the door open quickly and tossed in the grenade. He quickly closed the door and waited for the bang. A quiet sheen let out through the speakers. Seventy-Seven then threw the door open. "GO!" He shouted and charged into the room. He immediately ran to Fixer and Scorch, who were barely visible in the very dimly lit, dark room. But before Seventy-Seven could untie them, a Mandalorian had turned him around and jabbed his wrist gauntlet into Seventy-Seven's helmet from the side.

A loud mixture of metal crunching entered the speakers and the viewscreen went static. My mouth gaped open in panic. Though the visuals were dead, we could still hear through the speakers. I could hear struggling, shooting, even a small explosion. I heard a scream in agony, men shouting to each other, ruffling as the Katarn armor slammed up against each other, and blaster fire. I waited for a sign, something to let me know what was going on. Twenty-Two had turned to me and looked down at my legs. I looked at them and saw that I was lifting my legs up on the balls of my feet, bouncing my legs up and down in anticipation.

Finally, a voice, "Advisor! Have those gunships ready to send us up! We have commandos Four-Oh and Six-Two! We're making our way to the LZ as we speak. We're going to need some firepower on our side."  
I stood up as The Advisor said, "We're going to send down reinforcements in a minute Seventy-Seven. Good job."

I began walking down the isle of chairs towards the steps. The Advisor stood up and stopped in front of me. "Three-Eight, I don't think you should go."

"I'm expendable. I'm going." I gently pushed him aside and placed my helmet back on as I jumped up the steps and left the room, Twenty-Two following behind me.


	23. Chapter 22

A note from The Typer: I know I've been gone for quite some time with an unfinished campaign. I know this campaign was supposed to be finished months ago. I have no good excuse aside from me losing track of what really mattered and some other possible explanations. I've been working on another "project", not a book, but a site journey thingamajig. If you're at all interested, check it out and read the first two posts at the bottom to know what it really is all about. You can find it at justaclone2.tripod (you put a dot com after tripod), then /journey. I typed that weird because this site doesn't allow links and deletes them somehow. Anyways, I got a review yesterday and I decided to check things out here. I found the new "Reader Traffic" application and decided to check it out. I was stunned at how many people check around this book just to see if I've updated or not. I was blown away at how many readers I actually got just this month. Wow. I have some faithful fans, and I never knew it. I'm sorry for not updating in so long, but thanks for spreading the word and staying faithful readers. I WILL finish this story. It might take me some time to get my berrings around this and implement it into everything else I do, but I will finish it sooner or later. I think I'll finish the campaign soon as the school year starts once again. For now, enjoy the latest chapter of Delta Squad's story. I'll be back.

Chapter XXII-Day 900-2300 Hours-Republic Cruiser Striker-In orbit over Dxun

I was navigating the many hallways of the Striker to get to one of the two hanger bays in the ship when The Advisor had caught up with me.

"Three-Eight, I urge you not to go," said The Advisor. "We still need to plan the assault on Dxun, and both you and Twenty-Two have valuable information about the base. If Six-Two and Four-Oh don't make it, you two are the only ones who can provide info."

"Twenty-Two and I worked together throughout the past thirty-six to forty-eight hours. If I char my brains out down there he can tell you everything that happened," I replied as I quickened my pace down the more familiar hallways.

"Forget that, I'm going with you," Twenty-Two called out in reply to me. I haulted for a second and turned to the right, looked into Twenty-Two's visor for a moment, and then continued to walk.

"Three-Eight," continued The Advisor, "We're all expendable, all of us. Myself included! It is the information you hold that is valuable. And it doesn't seem I'll be able to keep Twenty-Two behind."

"Alright then, what do you want to know?" I replied trying to do anything to get The Advisor off my back.

"Nothing you could explain within five minutes."

"Then you'll just have to wait until I come back."

"But what if you don't come back? Have you ever considered that?"

"We're a little over two years into this war and I've always returned _successful_. You think I won't make it back this time?"

"Oh-Seven didn't make it back a third of a year ago."

I immediately spun on my heels and stopped eye to eye with The Advisor. I let a slight pause in before saying, "And whose fault is that?"

After a brief moment, I continued my complex pathway towards the hanger bay. The Advisor continued to bombard me with pointless reasons as to why I should not go save my men. After a minute of question-like reasons I simply blinked at my comm. unit and shut the Advisor out of my helmet.

"Can you locate where Lambda and Zeta squads are as we head down there," I asked Twenty-Two.

"I'm already triangulating the signals coming from three of their comm. units," replied Twenty-Two. "I'll have their location drawn up on my HUD in five minutes."

"Is it continual?"  
"No, but I can update it as we enter Dxun's atmosphere."

"How long should that take?"  
"Sixty seconds."

"Perfect."

We finally made it into the hanger bay. I didn't stop though; I flew down the steps skipping every other step. I navigated across the clustered room to reach a Republic Gunship. A nearby pair of clone pilots were doing a maintenance check. I tapped one of the pilots on the shoulder. I tried to talk to him but he rattled my helmet moments after I began speaking. I quickly popped my helmet off and asked him, "How long will it take for this ship to be ready?"

"What for?" He replied.

"A trip down to Dxun."

"I don't have a suicidal trip down to Dxun on my schedule, at least not for another hour."  
"We have to make an emergency trip, now."

"That'll take about five minutes."

"Hurry up and prep the ship then."

"Yes sir," he said while saluting. He turned to the other pilot next to him. "Private, lets get to work. We're taking an early trip to Dxun."

The Advisor had caught up with me. "Three-Eight."

I turned around, waiting for another one of his panic-induced suggestions.

"Don't do this. Don't force upon yourself what you have been trying to stop, what you have been trying to avoid. Three-Eight, do not get on that ship."

I only stared and blinked.

"I'm going to give you a direct order. Do _not_ get on that ship."

I turned to Twenty-Two, a little off to my left and half-way between The Advisor and I. "You still coming?" I asked him.

"For now," he replied.

"Then get in the ship," I said as I nudged my head towards the gunship.

He turned around, took a brief glance at The Advisor, and then climbed into the gunship behind me.

I slowly put my helmet on, locked it air tight, and turned on my comm. unit to The Advisor. He placed his helmet over his head, and locked it. I shut out any other intrusions to our conversation.

I then asked, "Why?"  
His faceless, expressionless helmet replied back. "You're not expendable. You're the deadliest squad in the galaxy. I think I understand that you don't want to leave your men behind. I know that. But I can't lose you all in one fight. You're a valuable tool, and if I have to lose two out of three men to keep any of them alive, then I must do it."

"That's what I thought."

I turned around and started for the ship.

"What are you doing?!"

"I only wanted to hear you state the reason."  
"Three-Eight!"  
I climbed into the ship.

"Three-Eight, come back here!"

I took my seat and turned my head towards him. He ran for the ship and called several men over.

"Arrest him, men," The Advisor demanded.

The clones looked at me, and at each other. They had no idea as to why they should arrest me. The Advisor cursed, and charged towards me and attempted to pull me out of the ship. I grabbed his neck and threw him up against the wall of the gunship. I tried to think of something to say, but came up with nothing. I tossed him aside to the ground and looked at the clone, gasping for air. He pulled his helmet off, and breathed heavily, letting the helmet roll to the side.

I once again tried to think of what to say. I accumulated one sentence before I jumped back into the gunship. I switched my comm. unit so The Advisor could hear me regardless of his missing helmet. I then painfully asked, "Whose side are you on?"

I quickly turned around, flung myself onto the gunship and shouted at the pilot to "get moving before someone got killed". The ship lifted off the ground as I checked my helmet's air status. I then looked over my right shoulder at The Advisor. He was staring into my eyes as he slowly slid his helmet on and locked it shut. I turned my incoming signals from The Advisor off and turned inwards to Twenty-Two. I began to argue with myself over whether this actually was a good choice.

_Should I have done this? The Advisor can take us all away. _

_Scorch and Fixer may die if I didn't do anything._

_Would it matter if you were separated?_

_Yes, because my duty is to make sure they live through this._

_What would Vau have you do?_

_What would regulations tell you to do? I've never disobeyed orders._

_Does it matter now? I'm going through what I decided to do, and I can't change that now. The only thing that matters now is getting Scorch and Fixer out of there._

"Got something to say, sir?" I must have been leaning in Twenty-Two's direction still.

I snapped out of it as fast as Lord Mirdalan's reaction to Vau saying "_oya_".

"Yes, get ready. It's going to be crowded down there when we arrive. I recommend you lock on to friendly signals. Go into the tactical HUD mode. You'll know what's friendly and what isn't, but still, keep your eyes open."

A click of static came into my helmet and the pilot began talking to me. "Sir, I know we're headed for Dxun, but where exactly on the planet are we going to land? We're three minutes away from hitting the planet, I need to know soon."

I remembered that Twenty-Two was following the two squads on his helmet. "How long will it take to go from entering Dxun's atmosphere to hitting the planet?"  
"About two minutes, why?"

"You'll get your coordinates one minute after entering the atmosphere."

"I'm sending you a general location to head for," added in Twenty-Two.

"Thanks," replied the pilot.

Moments later the shipped veered to the left and things got a little bit warmer as the heat of Dxun's atmosphere washed over my armor. I watched Twenty-Two as he worked on his datapad quickly to get the coordinates of Lambda squad updated as fast as he could. The second he got a lock, he uploaded it to the pilot. "Head here," I shouted.

"Copy that, sir. It looks a little crowded down there, I might need one of you two to jump on a turret to cover us."

"I'm on it," said Twenty-Two as he threw his gun and datapad into his backpack and mounted a beam cannon that was hanging off of the side of the gunship.

I looked out the side cracks of the gunship to see us circling down towards Lambda squad to pick them up. I could spot several Mandalorians chasing after them as well, but I couldn't see Scorch or Fixer yet. I stood up and grabbed the top holding rail as the gunship evaded fire and continued to lower itself while circling. I rattled on the right panel door, moments later the pilot opened it. I took out my DC-17 and switched to the sniper attachment as fast I could while doing everything I could to keep my balance. I then aimed down the scope and scanned for the Mandalorians. After some searching, I spotted a squad of them. I did not hesitate one bit, and shot the head of the nearest Mandalorian. The shot panged off of his shields and ricocheted into the helmet of the Mandalorian to his right, he dropped instantly. The other three went down as well trying to find cover. I saw another Mandalorian trying to help his buddy who I had just killed. I aimed down the scope again, and squeezed the trigger without thinking.

I fired and fired again relentlessly, without thinking at all. At the moment, I cared about nothing but Fixer and Scorch. The worry of my argument with The Advisor was no longer burning through my skull, I was just firing off rounds into silhouettes as I got nearer and nearer to my men.

The ship finally touched down on the Dxun ground. Lambda squad was about twenty feet away from us. Another cluster of Mandalorians could be seen hot on their tails. I jumped out of the ship when it was five feet from the ground and threw myself out to the ten clones running for the ship. Twenty-Two stopped the line of Mandalorians running at us with the beam turret, they fell and took cover. I scanned the clones that were making their way past me and saw Fixer, running with a slight limp next to another clone. I didn't hesitate and shouted, "Fixer!"

Fixer's posture almost improved at spotting me. "Sir," he replied, "I'm okay. Don't worry, we're fine. I'll be alright." Fixer had read my mind and assured me that at least _he_ was okay. Fixer continued talking and let the clone next to him keep running. "There's Scorch," he yelled out while pointing to the last two clones of the two squads. Both of them were carrying Scorch on their shoulders. I saw a Mandalorian round fire from behind them. Immediately, I went into a charge and knocked down the Mandalorian who had fired. I punched his helmet and let my blade sink into his skull at the same time. He jerked, and after a brief moment, went still and rigid. I stared into his empty visor, got up without thinking, and went back to Scorch.

"Lambda leader!" I called out to one of the clones holding Scorch up.

He turned his head to me, "Delta Lead?"

I nodded and shouted over the beam turret's loud hum, "How's Six-Two?"

"Not too good," he replied as we laid him onto the Republic Gunship's floor. "He's losing a lot of blood. We need to evacuate him as fast as we can."

I nodded in fear and brief panic. The pilot's voiced buzzed in, "Sir, I can't carry twelve soldiers. My limitation is six clones, not counting me and my co-pilot."

Seventy-Seven turned to me. "Sir, I'd be happy to keep me and one of my squads back and do some damage with you."

That solved half of my problems. "Okay, get three more of your men who are willing to stay and fight. But only do it if they are _willing_."

Lambda lead seemed to understand and went to talk to his men. I found Fixer on the gunship looking over Scorch. I yelled through my squad's communication channel, "The ship can only take two of us back to the _Striker_, and I want one of you to stay with Scorch here, he may not make it."

"I'll go," replied Twenty-Two. I looked over to him, sitting in the turret's ball cage.

"You sure?" I asked.

"Positive."

"Okay, Fixer, you mind staying with me for a while?"

"Not a problem," he said as he jumped off of the other side of the gunship and grabbed some ammo that was scattered on the ship.

I looked over to one of the clone's that were monitoring Scorch. "What happened to him?" I asked.

"Thermal detonator hit him in the gut. He's losing a lot of blood," the clone replied.

"Do everything you can for him. Put pressure wherever he's bleeding."

The clone nodded. I took one last look at Scorch and then gave the word to the pilot to take off. The ship lifted slowly, and then turned upwards towards the direction of the _Striker_, and left sight.

I turned around, and Seventy-Seven was with three other clones, walking up to me. It was now 2330 hours. Dxun was as dark as ever, more Mandalorians were bound to come our way. On top of that, my ammo resources were limited. Fixer stood along-side me, but wondered the same thing Seventy-Seven asked me. "What do we do now?" He said.

I pulled out my DC-17, switched my helmet to night-vision mode, and calmly said the only reasonable answer. "Now, we hunt."


	24. Chapter 23

Chapter XXIII-Day 901-2330 Hours-Jungles of Dxun

_It is your duty to lead these men, to guide them through experiences that are going to be tough, terrible, and horrifying. They have as much experience as you do, making you nothing but an equal to them. But by regulations _you_ alone are tasked in taking these men straight into war. By regulations, _you_ alone are supposed to take your brothers through death and bloodshed. By regulations, _they_ are to rely on you and obey your every whim. If _you_ fail _them_, they die as your brothers. If _they_ fail _you_, you all die as brothers. Either way you are brothers. Therefore, do not let even the most important of regulations and duties get in between _you_ and _them_._

_-Delta Three-Eight to newly appointed squad leader_

Half of a Separatist prototype capital ship would be crashing down through Dxun's atmosphere within ten or fifteen minutes. Whatever remains of the ship existed would be excellent for scavenging by the Mandalorians. I had five good men with me aside from myself: Fixer, and four dispatch clones, one being a dispatch squad leader. Between the six of us was a limited supply of different types of ammo for different gun types. Who knows how long it would take for the Advisor to send a gunship to rescue our keisters. There was only one logical thing to do to keep us alive over the next who knows how long.

"Fixer," I shouted out, "Pull out a recon orb and send it up. Find that Separatist ship that's coming our way."

Fixer crouched down on the spot and slung his backpack off and pulled out a large datapad-like device along with a small round silver metal ball.

"Seventy-Seven," I called out. The dispatch squad leader turned around almost immediately. A battle tired voice replied through my helmet, "Yes, sir?"

"Set up a perimeter with your men. Nothing permanent, we just need cover while Forty here does some reconnaissance."

"Copy that." Seventy-Seven turned towards his men and started speaking to them on a separate comm channel.

I turned back to Fixer, who had turned on his large datapad and released the recon orb into the sky. On his datapad was now a holographic display of the forest around us from above. "How's it going?" I asked.

"Give me a minute," he replied. "This orb is made to scan the ground, not the sky. I'll have to reverse the flight maneuvers of this little guy. Let me bring it back down." About ten seconds later, the small orb had come back down gently into Fixer's hand. The second it was in his hand, Fixer hit a button that shut it off. He then flipped it over, pulled out a hydrospanner, and delicately took off the casing on the bottom half of the droid. Inside were very small computer parts, some I could recognize, along with small little round pellets at the top of the casing.

Fixer hit a button and his hydrospanner lengthened. Fixer carefully inserted his hydrospanner into the orb and started grabbing the pellets out of the orb and placing them on his datapad. The small orbs floated above his datapad by just an inch or two. While he was working, Fixer asked me, "So, how are you holding up?"

I sighed. I felt a little relieved. Fixer was second in command of Delta Squad. He may not have fully understood the positions and problems I had, but he certainly got the picture more than Scorch and Sev. Scorch was troubled, Sev was gone, and his replacement was simply not to be fully trusted for now. Fixer was my booster, my shoulder to lean on when I needed it.

"Boss?" Fixer said, staring at me. I was dazing.

I shook myself out of it. "I'm worried for Scorch. He didn't look good."

"I'm surprised you didn't go with him. Scorch has been your primary concern for the past three months."

"I don't want the squad split up."

"You sure it's just that?"

"What else could it be?"

"Seven."

"No. It's not about Sev. I mean, leaving him bugged me, impacted me. But with his loss, making sure Scorch and everyone else in this squad stays alive is my priority. I don't want that to happen again."

"You don't regret leaving him?"

"You bet your shebs I do. I simply can't linger on losing him, or I'll lose focus and lose more men."

"You might be losing one right now."

"If he dies, I don't think I would have had anything to say to him."

"Probably what you should say."

"What does this matter anyways? I can't do anything about it right now."

Loud static cut into my helmet, and then a voice, "Boss! This is Twenty-Two! Are you there?"

"I hear you Twenty-Two, no need to shout. I can hear through static."

"Six-Two is going to be fine. He has a concussion, I donated some blood to him on the way back to the _Striker_. He's in the medical bay right now."

"Good. Heard anything from The Advisor?"

"Not much. I went to him and asked him about what's going to be done. He said we have reinforcements coming from both sides of the war. He doesn't want to make any dangerous moves right now. So while we wait for backup, he asked for my helmet. He and his assistants are going over my video records as we speak."

"All right, keep me posted will ya?"

"Not a problem. Also, I deleted our conversation at the diner yesterday from the video log and substituted the time frame spent sight seeing so they won't know about our discussion."

_I hadn't even thought about that._ "Thanks."

"No problem. Hang in there Boss, Scorch wants to see you."

"That'll be a little tough, keep your eyes on my tracker. You'll know what my next plan will be from there."

"Wouldn't it be easier to just tell me what you're going to do?"

"Maybe. But I don't know if I can go through on it yet."

"Okay, Twenty-Two out."

Fixer spoke again. "Scorch is alright?"

I nodded. Fixer had finished working on the orb and replaced the bottom panel. The orb lifted off of his hand. It was now flying upside down, and moved back into its position in the sky.

"Okay," commented Fixer, "The orb can now get a reading from the sky _and_ ground. I just split the camera panel into two and put one on each side. I also distributed the floating pellets so it can levitate either way so the holo-image won't turn upside down. It may not fly as high, but it should do the trick."

"Good. Get a reading on where that front half of the Separatist ship is, and when and where it is going to crash with Dxun."

"Okay, just a tick. Got it. Just let me bring it up in 3D."

Fixer hit a few more buttons and then waved me down. I knelt down at the same level as Fixer. The large datapad on the ground started displaying a holographic image of the area ahead of us. It almost completely matched the area around us.

"Okay, the Separatist ship is going to enter the atmosphere in ten minutes around here," he pointed to an area in the sky on the image and then pointed again towards the real sky as an estimate, "Then, the ship will break through the atmosphere just two minutes later and start its crash course for this cluster of forest about a mile and a half north."

"Pack it up, we're leaving." I stood up and looked around for Seventy-Seven. He was nowhere to be seen. I could see other soldiers though. I went up to the nearest soldier and tapped him on the shoulder.

"Where's your leader son?"

He pointed upwards. I looked up and saw Seventy-Seven aiming down a sniper scope out into the forest.

"Find anything Seventy-Seven?" I asked.

He didn't take his focus off the scope. "No droids, no Mandalorians, just a couple cannoks passing by. I _really_ wanted some target practice."

"Good. We're moving out. Get you men and start going north."

"Shouldn't we rally on you?"

"No time, start working your way north. Catch up to Fixer and I if you can."

Fixer caught up with me and I nodded northward. "Lets go."

The two of us got about twenty feet when Seventy-Seven locked into my comm. "Sir?"

"Boss, not sir."

"Boss, where are we supposed to be going up north if we can't catch up?"

"You'll find out in ten minutes."

"Wouldn't you mind to elaborate? I'm a little slow."

"Trust me. You'll know it when it happens."

"Copy," Seventy-Seven said reluctantly, "Lambda Lead out."

Right after Seventy-Seven left, Fixer jumped in. "Why'd you have him call you Boss?"

For a moment, the question puzzled me.

_Why did I give him my actual name?_

I replied with the only answer that came to mind. "Not sure. I've got a feeling we're not going to make it out of here that easily. I think we can disrupt the brotherhood bond for the next few hours with these guys. It's not like the four of us haven't lost that grip anyways."

"Boss?" Fixer asked, not fully understanding what I meant.

"I mean ever since, you know, we haven't really held a high morale between the remaining three of us. Even you and I haven't really found a way to re-adjust and get comfortable yet."

"It takes time. Sev's only been gone for three months. We've been together for ten years. We just have to find better turf."

I nodded, but wasn't paying complete attention to what Fixer said. I stopped listening when he mentioned Sev being gone for three months.

"Boss?" I turned my head to him. "We're going to be fine. We'll pull through."

"I know." I really didn't.

I tried to distract myself. "How long 'till that ship starts burning up?"

Fixer continued to look forward as we were running. He was pulling up the info in his visor. "Technically, it shouldn't burn, except for any open sections where the heat shields would be broken. So there might be a few spots on fire, but everything up front would be just fine. Here we go. The ship will enter Dxun's atmosphere in exactly five minutes and twenty-six seconds."

That was Fixer all over, exact and punctual.

"How far are we?"

"We are point seven five miles away from the calculated crash site."

"How far away is Seventy-Seven and Lambda Squad?"

"They are a quarter of a mile away from us. They might catch up based on their speed."

"He gathered his men fast."

"Were you expecting that?"

"No, not really. Seventy-Seven is a pretty surprising soldier. He got you and Scorch out of there. I wasn't expecting him to be successful."

"I was surprised too. He leads his men like one of us, brutal fighter."

"Really?"

"He would've scared the crap out of me if he was going after me."

"I don't think these Mandalorians scare easily."

Fixer segued the conversation into something I didn't want to talk about, "Speaking of Mandalorians. What are we going to do about this?"

"What? _You_ going against orders?"

"Who's disobeying orders? I'm simply thinking about what we're about to do for today, and what it will mean tomorrow, might change a few things to everyone else who knows about us."

"What?"

"You assume me to be the one to always obey orders. I probably always will. But that doesn't mean I'm going to do them without any heart, like a machine."

"Good point."

"I'm human. Remember what happened to Omega at Fest? There was a lot of talk going around about Omega going in on Fest. Darman killed two clones there. Darman killed two clones there just trying to defend himself. Sull went AWOL, still hasn't been found. And everyone, _everyone_, throughout the GAR knows what happened to Fi."

He was completely right. Fi was presumed dead, we were told so, but conspiracies flew around about him. Omega squad decided to help out their fellow clones and clear out a building near Gaftikar during the assault on Fest. Fi, like I said, technically didn't make it, meanwhile he's probably off on another planet recovering from his wounds. The results of that mission echoed throughout the galaxy, bouncing off of each clone, especially us commandos.

"I think I see your point," I replied. "I'm not completely sure how I feel about this. The fact that Mandalorians are on this planet even surprised me. I don't think I really care what any other clones care about us. Few things are on my mind, the least of which is our public image to the rest of the GAR. A lot of 'em already hate us, the Mandalorians _definitely_ hate us in many cases."

"So regardless of our public image, what do think about what we're going to do?"

"I don't feel bad in all honesty. These guys threatened the life of you and Scorch. And for that, I want revenge. These aren't proper Mandalorians, aside from the fact that they want to rise up and make themselves known. So right now, I don't feel bad about what we're doing."

A loud thunder clap let out in the dark night.

"Sounds like a storm is on its way," I commented.

"That wasn't a storm," Fixer corrected, "that was a capital ship breaking through the atmosphere. The atmosphere was closing up."

The whole forest lit up in a bright white light for a brief second, and then a loud clap let out once more. "_That_ was a storm," I said.

"Okay," Fixer informed me, "We've got two minutes before that thing breaks through. It'll take around a minute after that to hit the ground."

"Time to hustle then," I switched my comlink to both Fixer and Lambda Squad, "Fixer, Lambda Squad, time to hustle. We've got a ship crashing down in a couple minutes and we're going to use it to save our scorch burned hides. Double time it now. Move out!"

We started sprinting as fast we could. The Mandalorian armor Fixer and I were wearing was much more light than our bulky Katarn class armor, but it didn't look as good. It had a very scrappy and trashed look about it. As I was running, I looked around my HUD. Lambda Squad was closing in fast. And in the top right corner of my HUD was a symbol shaped like an oddly three pointed spire. Underneath it was a name written in Besalisk. _Who made this armor? I wonder if the people who made the armor are making the Mandalorian weapons in secret._ Beneath the Besalisk writing was written "Avenger Class I Mandalorian Armor."

_What a fitting name._

My chain of thought was shaken by another loud explosion. Against the sky full of lighting I could see the capital ship, the back end burning as it was falling through the sky. It was coming in fast.

"Fixer," I called out.

"We have forty seconds. We're almost there."

I switched my comm. to include Lambda Squad. "That ship is our current rally point. Double time it Lambda Squad, it's time to start earning our pay!"

"What pay?" asked the Lambda Leader in an almost monotone voice.

Fixer and I quickly went into a dead sprint. We had a lot to do in a little amount of time.

Very little time passed before the ship came into view. The back portion was still in flames, and the front was pretty smashed up from the crash. Fixer started to climb the ship to see what lied beyond it. I double blinked at his number in my HUD and a quick view screen showed up on the right portion of my helmet. As Fixer continued to climb, I spun on my heels to see Lambda Squad catching up to me. Fixer had reached the top of the ship and turned on his night vision. Nothing but scorched trees and more forestry was in sight.

"Nothing over here Boss," Fixer let me know.

"Not yet," I replied, "Stay up there and keep your eyes open."

"Copy that."

Seventy-Seven and his squad had caught up with us not two minutes after Fixer and I arrived.

"Okay. Lambda Squad, we don't have too much time. Get inside the front areas of this ship. Be careful not to enter the spots that are on fire. I want one light repeating blaster set up for suppression, one man running and grabbing weapons and ammo throughout the ship, and one more man taking a regular suppression spot. Seventy-Seven," he turned his head toward me from the ship, "Do you have a good sniper on your squad?"

"That'd be me," Seventy-Seven replied.

"Shoot this," I said right before I tossed an ECD in the air.

Seventy-Seven quickly drew his pistol and shot the ECD just as it was reaching its highest point. An explosion of electricity spread across the air for a few moments, and then the bolts shrunk into nothing.

"All right, you're going to be taking a sniper position with Fixer up top. I'll place you as close to your men as I can. And I'll stay in the ship with your guys. We don't want to broadcast on open channels from here on out. Only use GAR or inter-squad comm. units. You got that?"

"Yes sir," replied all four men as one.

"Okay, get inside there."

Lambda Squad went into the ship.I held my left eye shut for two seconds, which brought up my mission clock._ 2355, I'll check on Lamba Lead in five minutes._ I went up to the ship and climbed up to where Fixer was. I then pulled out my DC, and switched out the iron sights for the scope.

"Pretty good idea Boss," Fixer said to me.

"The ship?" I asked in reply.

He nodded.

"I think it's our only chance to get out of this alive."

"We'll be fine. We've had worse. Remember Thule?"

"How could I not?" _I've remembered them all. _

We always did that, always reassured ourselves that our current situation was nowhere near as bad as another one. I started scanning the forest. I flipped on the night vision in my HUD, but the lighting from the upcoming storm only blinded me repeatedly. It was wasting time, I shut it off. I could see in the dark well enough just as well as in the light.

"Got any trap plans up your bucket?" I asked Fixer.

"I might. These are Mandalorians though. We can't use _our_ traps."

"How about a decoy?"

"The ship is too big to detract attention. And we can't sacrifice any manpower to somewhere else."

"What haven't the Mandalorians done, or in a while at least?"

A flash of lighting lit up the whole forest for a brief second. Then a loud rumble ran through the ground and the ship. I heard a howl deeper in the forest. It hit me.

"This is Dxun. I think it's time these Mandalorians remembered that. I'll send Seventy-Seven up in a few minutes. Can you hold down the fort until I get back?"

"Not a problem."

As I was heading off the ship, I found a hatch on top. I opened it up and saw it was the hatch down to the droid armory. I jumped down and saw one of Seventy-Seven's men grabbing weapons and ammo from there. I grabbed a couple boxes of grenades and followed the trooper. He went out into the hallway and walked several paces to the left, which lead away from the bridge. He set down what he was carrying. I saw a stack of grenade boxes and put them down in the pile.

I looked up and down the hallway and noticed the trooper had set up a growing collection of weapons and ammo half way between the light repeating blaster and the position where the third trooper was setting up. _Great. These guys know what they're doing._

"Where's Seventy-Seven?" I asked the soldier carrying ammo.

He pointed down the hallway that lead to the bridge. I walked down the hallway and found Seventy-Seven helping set up the light repeating blaster. He turned to me once I walked in. "Okay, Fixer is all set up for you to take the sniper position with him. I found a hatch from the droid armory nearby that'll let you and Fixer jump down here pretty quickly. Follow me," I said.

As the two of us walked I asked him, "These guys have names?"

He nodded, "The one who is manning the LRB is Carbon. The ammo guy is A'denla. The second suppressor is Talyc."

I made a mental note of the names and showed Seventy-Seven the exit hatch. I followed him through the hatch. The Mandalorians were going to show, and soon.

"Okay, we need a trap. Seventy-Seven, I have an idea but I'm going to need Fixer to execute it. And we're going to have to head out there," I pointed my head towards the forest leading away from the ship.

He nodded in response.

"Can you hold down the fort until then?" I asked him.

"Not a problem," he said, "How long do you think you'll be?"

"We shouldn't be gone for more than twenty minutes. Keep things quiet until I get back. If Mandalorians show up, try not to reveal yourselves. They're going to try to loot everything they can from this ship. It'd be best if we can surprise them. As far as they're concerned, we left the planet when those last gunships took off."


End file.
